Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason

by Allen Drury

  “You are laying it on a little thick, old girl,” Herbert agreed, peering at Valuela severely over his glass.

  “Yes, Val,” Selena said. “It isn’t as though it were the end of the world, you know.”

  “The end of a lot of things,” Valuela said grimly. “Maybe the world. Anyway, a lot of things. Maybe even America, if her President doesn’t do something more than he has done to save her.”

  “What would you suggest, Val?” he asked quietly, looking as tired as these dreadful days of strain and worry had made him, yet still haggardly handsome, commanding, impressive, statesmanly.

  “You have done so many things that seem wrong to me,” she said bleakly, “and have let so many things that seem wrong to me either slip by you, or you have actually encouraged them, that I don’t know, now, what I would do.” She paused, her eyes widened in thought. “If I were sitting in that chair down there”—she gestured toward the Oval Office, below and to their right in the West Wing—“right now, as of this moment, with all that has happened … I should make some single symbolic answer to the Russians, I think—maybe bombing their trawlers in Alaska. Then I would weed out all the trash around me, such as Senator Van Ackerman, I would ask Congress to repeal the ‘Help America’ Act, I would call in all the old, wise heads such as President Abbott, and I would form a national coalition government, insofar as that’s possible under our system. And I guess,” she added with some bitterness, “that anything is possible under our system, these days.”

  “And then?” he asked, still quietly. “Suppose the Russians retaliated for my bombing their trawlers? Suppose Congress refused to repeal the act? Suppose Abbott and the others refused to serve?”

  “They’ll serve,” she said. “They’re desperate to serve.… It’s too late to take counsel of your fears, Ted. You must be resolute—resolute. Nothing is left to us but your courage, I’m afraid. And I guess,” she said, giving him a sudden penetrating glance, a combination of concern, affection and pity, “there isn’t too much of that, right?”

  “Val,” Patsy said sharply, “you haven’t any right—”

  He raised a quieting hand. “Yes, she does, Pat.” For a moment a little of the old Ted came back. He smiled. “She may be the last guardian of the indomitable Jason legend. We’re family; she does … I would just say one thing, though, Val: you don’t know all that I know, and you don’t have the responsibility that I have.” His eyes grew somber and faraway as she replied impatiently.

  “No, of course not, of course not, who does? But that doesn’t mean that the basic situation changes. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come down to a matter of character in the final analysis. It’s your character against the Russians. You’re in a worldwide game of bluff, it seems to me. How tough are they? How tough are you? That’s the essential.”

  “But,” he began with a sudden anger, “it’s past time—past time for—”

  “It’s never past time for character,” she said. “Jasons used to have some.”

  “Really, old girl,” Herbert protested. “Really, you are getting to be too much. He knows what he’s doing, now leave him alone. Actually, I can’t see it’s all that bad. You could look at it as being simply the redressing of a balance in world affairs which for years has been grossly and inexcusably weighted on the side of this country.” He gave the sudden, sunny, open smile the photographers had captured in so many peace marches and demonstrations down the years. “Why shouldn’t the Russians have their day in the sun? Haven’t they got as much right as we?”

  “That’s exactly what I say,” Patsy agreed. “They’ve been a little crude about it, perhaps, but I can understand their point of view. I expect it will all settle down comfortably before long. If you and all the others, Val,” she added sharply, “don’t succeed in throwing him completely off balance with this constant caterwauling.”

  “We’ve got a law to stop that now, haven’t we?” Selena inquired lazily, passing her glass to her brother for a refill. “Watch out, Val!” She chuckled. “You may be in a concentration camp before you know it!”

  “Very funny,” Valuela said sharply. “Very amusing, I’m sure. You think that’s a joke, Sel? You think it isn’t going to start happening to people very soon now, with this new law on the books? Ask Senator Van Ackerman. Ted may be an innocent but I’m sure Van Ackerman has plans.”

  “Oh, bugaboos!” Herbert said grandly, “Bugaboos, bugaboos! Things like that just couldn’t happen in America, Val, you know that as well as we do. They just couldn’t happen.”

  “The hell they couldn’t,” she said. “The hell they couldn’t. What’s to prevent it? The law is there now. All it needs is the right mentality to operate it. The Senator has that, I’m sure. Why did you appoint him, Ted? Whatever possessed you? In fact, whatever possessed you to sign the bill at all? And then to put a worthless thing like that in a position of such power—it battles me.” She sighed. “It baffles me. You’ve done such very strange things in the last few days.”

  “I don’t think he’s such a thug,” Patsy said stoutly. “He was one of the very first to support Ted for the Presidency, and he’s always been a fighter for the Right Things. Fred Van Ackerman has been a REAL liberal, Val, and don’t you forget it. He may be a little crude, sometimes, and he does get a little excited now and then, but basically, he’s a good man. A GOOD,” she repeated with a burst of enthusiasm that seemed, somehow, a trifle forced, “man.”

  “You can always count on him to be on the Right Side,” Herbert agreed thoughtfully. “He backs the Genuine Causes, Val, you have to admit that.”

  “He’s a thug,” Valuela said flatly. “A thug and a disgrace to this Administration. He has been a very dangerous man with his NAWAC association, and now that he’s fortified by a law he’s going to be even more dangerous. It was a dreadful appointment, just as it’s a dreadful law. Neither should have received your support for a minute, Ted. Not a single minute.”

  He shrugged, a curiously detached and uninvolved gesture that made her give him a sudden sharp look, as though she wondered if he were really with them.

  “He has been a faithful supporter,” he said, “and George Wattersill, who has direct responsibility for administering the law, wanted him. So I appointed him. I trust George to keep him under control.” He smiled with a certain irony. “It would be to his interest to do so, I should think.”

  “And as for the law, Val,” Herbert said, “you must admit there have been most dismaying demonstrations against Ted. Most dismaying. How can he possibly function in such an atmosphere? He has to have some protection, goodness knows. There wouldn’t be any kind of government in a tense period like this if everybody was permitted to attack it and try to tear it down. Now, that’s just common sense.”

  “Why wasn’t it common sense for them to have a law years ago to stop people like you and Selena from demonstrating against things?” Valuela demanded. “Why shouldn’t that have been done long ago?”

  “But we always demonstrated against bad things,” Herbert said comfortably. “We were on the Right Side, Val. It would have been absolutely undemocratic and absolutely illiberal to have tried to stop us.”

  “It would,” Selena said firmly, “have been unconstitutional and a terrible threat to our democratic liberties.”

  “Well, then, why—” Valuela began. Then she stopped abruptly and shook her head in a gesture close to despair. “You are beyond belief. What a rationale. What a rationale! And there are millions of you. Millions!”

  “It is a rationale,” Selena pointed out with an almost prim smugness, “which has supported the faith and belief of millions of people in this country and abroad for years, Val, simply years. You are quite correct on that. We couldn’t have kept going if we hadn’t been able to demonstrate against things and for things. Nor could this democracy, either.”

  “That’s exactly—” Valuela began. “That’s exactly—” Then she stopped and shook her head with a shrug that was genuinely helple
ss.

  “Now, let’s stop badgering Ted and let him work it out in his own way,” Patsy suggested firmly. “His OWN way, Val. He IS the President and HE knows BEST. So stop badgering. Just stop it!”

  Valuela stood up, looked once more through narrowed eyes at the Washington Monument ghostly in the storm. As she did the lights went out, denoting midnight. Nothing was out there now but the cruel wind and the heavy flakes splatting wetly against the big glass windows of the solarium. She turned back to face them, a stout, elderly, rather garish lady, overly made up, overly bejeweled, overly dressed, but possessed of a certain solid dignity nonetheless.

  “I think I am going back to the villa in Positano. I’ll be leaving early in the morning. I’ll probably have breakfast sent to the room, so I expect I won’t be seeing you all again for a while. I’ll say goodbye now.”

  “Are you afraid, Val?” Patsy asked tauntingly as they all stood up. “Are you trying to HIDE?”

  “No, I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m the Jason who isn’t afraid, don’t you remember?”

  “None of US is afraid either,” Patsy said brightly. “What makes you think WE are? I still think you’re trying to hide.”

  “Where is there to hide?” Valuela asked simply. “If they get away with this with the United States, all of Europe will fall to them in six months because there won’t be anybody left to protect it. I expect to see Italy go in a week, if that long.… No, I’m not going there to hide, I’m just going there to wait it out in my own home, among the things I like best. I’m going there,” she said, and for the first time her voice quivered a little, “because I don’t want to stay here and see it happen to my own country.… Teddy—” she stepped forward, took his head between her hands, kissed him tenderly on the cheek—“my dear—try to be brave, try not to worry too much, try to do what is best. It may yet work out all right for you, and for all of us. God! It has to.… Selena—” she gave her sister a quick, impersonal brush of the cheek—“Herbert—” she did the same—“Patsy—” the same—“everybody, goodbye. I may be back in the spring if everything is all right. If it isn’t—” she shrugged, her eyes darkened, she seemed close to tears. But she straightened her back and lifted her head with something of Doña Valuela’s own indomitable air. “If it isn’t, then I hope you may meet it as I intend to do, with dignity and with courage. Good night, all.”

  And she turned quickly and left the room.

  “WELL!” Patsy said after the door closed. “If THAT wasn’t a dramatic farewell!”

  “She’s always been that way,” Selena said indifferently. “She’ll get over it when everything calms down again.”

  “So will we all, I expect,” Herbert said cheerfully. “Good night, all, also. I think I shall toddle along. Have to be up and demonstrating tomorrow, you know! Assuming, that is,” he said with a complacent irony, “you will permit me to do so, Ted?”

  He nodded and managed a smile, more moved by his aunt’s valedictory than he wanted them to see.

  “It’s permissible,” he said. “I’ll talk to Fred Van Ackerman.”

  “You do that,” Herbert said with a jolly laugh. “You do that very thing! Good night!”

  “We’re coming along too,” Patsy said; and suddenly she too stepped forward and kissed her brother. “You’re all right, Teddy. We’re your family and WE have faith in you. You can always count on us, you know that.”

  “Right,” he said with a quick nod, for it seemed to be all he could manage as they turned away. “Right.”

  Alone after they left—utterly alone, as he felt in some dark, dimly grasped way he had been ever since Ceil’s death—he too stood staring out at the swirling storm. It was very heavy, and for the last few days had been very persistent, blizzards seeming to pile upon blizzards, coming out of the west to savage the continent with record winds, record snowfalls, record temperatures from California to the eastern seaboard. He wondered for a moment if this came from the third table—the weather table, which Tashikov had carefully kept darkened during their talk, but which Tashikov’s aides had later illuminated for him with many smirks and satisfied, significant looks. As long ago as the mid-sixties, scientists had been working on controlling the weather for military purposes. By the early seventies they were within sight of their goal. Now, the Russians told him, they had achieved it. He had not believed that, though he believed the rest. It seemed too much a horror, too much the science-fiction nightmare. But the scientists had been working, working, working in their incessant damnable busy, busy way. That was historic fact. It was not at all beyond possibility that they had succeeded. He knew America’s own scientists were well within reach of it. Perhaps the Russians had been telling the truth.

  Yet in some curious dream sense, as though he were faraway looking down upon himself—that lonely figure in the solarium who bore the hopes of his nation and of all those helpless and defenseless peoples around the world who still, for all their constant bitter criticizing, looked to the American shield for their protection—he did not care. It did not matter. Nothing more could possibly add to the heavy weight he was carrying, nothing more could possibly increase the staggering load of terrors that bore him down. If it were true, it was just one more thing—just one more thing. Just something more to meet, when he already had so much.

  Valuela, like most women, oversimplified; but how he wished he could act as simply and directly as she would have him do. The Russians had, he acknowledged that; but they had acted first, using the elements of long-range secret preparation—carefully gathered, overwhelming force—cruel and ruthless surprise. That was not the American way. Americans had been conditioned over many years by their educators and their opinion formers to doubt themselves, question their motives, hesitate, agonize, temporize—retreat. Americans had been conditioned, in fact, to lose. And now, with the greatest idealism and the best will in the world, he had offered the Russians voluntary concessions that could not be taken back, once the Russians had moved, without blowing up the world. And so, under his Presidency, it at last was beginning to seem almost inevitable that America would lose.

  Almost—but perhaps not quite. Perhaps there was still something to be found in delay, in equivocation, in playing for time.

  He had done what he could to secure its advantages while, it seemed to him, moving in ways still open to him to strengthen his position. And if his position was strengthened, surely that strengthened the position of his country. How could the two be separated?

  So he had permitted the Help America bill to go through Congress and had signed it into law: because now, with the situation as desperate as it was, he really could not allow or afford to his domestic opponents the luxury of seeking to interfere with every move he felt compelled to take for the sake of his country. They did not know what he knew, as he had told Valuela. They could not be allowed to interfere, through ignorance, however patriotic and well-meaning. Later on, no doubt, after the crisis had eased somewhat, he could consider requesting a repeal of the law. Right now he felt he really must have domestic peace and tranquility in the face of the Communist threat, if he was to find the way out.

  The action of the Court in upholding the law had confirmed him in his belief. It was true the Court’s decision had been essentially negative, 4 to 4, and it was true that Tommy Davis’ sudden death from heart strain and overwork had been amazingly fortuitous. And yet might not that, also, be regarded as some indication that he was doing the right thing? Certainly the fact that the Court in any event was so narrowly divided indicated that there was a substantial body of opinion which upheld his point of view and endorsed his actions.

  The appointment of George Henry Wattersill to head the new Special Branch in the Justice Department, and the nomination of Fred Van Ackerman to work with him as head of the Domestic Tranquility Board had to some degree been forced upon him because they were the most vocal and available leaders of the forces that supported him. But he was not as worried as his predecessor and others see
med to be about the two men. George Wattersill was a fatuous fool, basically, and could be controlled. Fred Van Ackerman, though he sensed in him something potentially more dangerous, could be played off against George, and vice versa, to keep him in line. And the President knew, as his uncle knew, that fundamentally there was no real need to fear that the act would be administered unjustly or undemocratically, because this was America, and in America things like that simply just didn’t happen. The mere existence and threat of the law, he was sure, would be enough.

  And finally, there were the actions of the Congress tonight. He had been dismayed that his supporters had apparently not received the signal in his message on the national defense, that they had, innocent and earnest, insisted on rejecting it as a gesture offensive to their peace-loving souls and offensive to the Russians. But in the long run, maybe their instinct had been right. Maybe, having committed the nation to peace, he should be prepared to stay with it and not flirt, even indirectly, with a return to older, less popular methods. It would take months to rearm anyway—more likely years. All the attempt would have accomplished would have been to annoy the Russians. And that would only complicate his problems more.

  He regretted, now, that he had let the ex-President and his friends browbeat him into even that half-militant gesture. It had made him look, to the perceptive who went behind the facade of things, faintly ridiculous; and Ted Jason did not like to look ridiculous. Nor could he afford to, when all he had left to bring to the situation was his own popularity, and the respect a united people might be able to give him, to strengthen his hand.

  His popularity, in fact, was the one thing that seemed to be surviving in reasonably good shape. If the Congress represented the people, and that one had to believe, his popularity was doing all right. The votes in the two houses on the impeachment question had demonstrated that. The House had voted directly on the issue and endorsed him overwhelmingly. The Senate had not had any legal right to vote on the matter at that stage at all, yet it had ignored legalities, defied the Constitution and given him equally overwhelming support.