by Allen Drury
“As members of Congress,” Lafe said, trying to keep his voice steady and reasonable, trying to hang onto traditional patterns of thought because they were rapidly becoming the only things left to hang onto, “we have immunity from arrest for what we say on the floor. They can’t arrest us. They wouldn’t dare.”
“‘Wouldn’t dare!’” Mabel said with a hopeless, forsaken, bitterly scornful little laugh. “‘Wouldn’t dare!’ You’ll see what they dare, pretty darned quick!”
“Oh, really, now,” Krishna Khaleel said with a nervous jocularity, as though speaking from some other, almost-forgotten world, as indeed he was. “Oh, really, now—”
But they all turned and stared at him blankly and after a moment his voice trailed away and he murmured, “Oh, really, now!” once more to himself in a worried, rather absent-minded little whisper, and subsided.
“Is that your final answer?” Lafe asked, very low. Mabel stared at him for a long time, her eyes wide, making no attempt to stop the tears that rolled steadily down her cheeks.
“That’s it,” she said at last “That’s it.”
“But it’s a time to stay together!” Lafe cried with a sudden harsh bitterness. “It’s not a time to stay apart! We’re all lost, if that’s what we do!”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m not very brave, and I guess—I guess they’ve won, as far as I’m concerned.… ”
They were all silent, staying as they were, making no attempt to get up and move toward the food, making no attempt to be “social,” though it might have eased the moment. The gesture seemed suddenly very pointless. At last William Abbott spoke, in a musing, faraway tone.
“Somebody must do something.… ” His eyes met those of the Secretary of State, somber and deeply unhappy, across the room. “I don’t know what it is, but somebody must do it.… ”
“Are you suggesting,” Bob Leffingwell inquired with something of the old, wry dryness, “that I shoot him?”
“Are you suggesting,” the ex-President said with a deliberately matching dryness, “that you will not be shot, if it suits the purposes of some people in your Administration to do so?”
“Well—” the Secretary of State began almost angrily, almost impatiently. Then he stopped. His voice trailed away. Finally he smiled a little, though without humor.
“You do reduce it to essentials.”
“That’s where it’s at,” Bill Abbott said crisply. “That is definitely where it’s at.” He gave the Secretary of State a long, appraising look. “Why don’t you and Ewan MacDonald,” he suggested softly, “discuss it together?”
For a moment Robert A. Leffingwell looked absolutely flabbergasted while the others suddenly became very, very quiet.
“But Ewan MacDonald,” the Secretary of State said at last in a disbelieving near whisper, “is Secretary of Defense.”
The ex-President nodded calmly.
“Exactly so. Is anyone here going to report me for the suggestion?”
He looked slowly and carefully around the room, face by face, until he was satisfied at last that not even the Indian Ambassador would dare. Then his gaze returned to the Secretary of State.
“Well?”
Robert A. Leffingwell shook his head, hard, as if to clear it, and spoke in the same bemused near-whisper.
“If I understand you correctly, you are advocating treason.”
“What is treason, now?” the ex-President demanded, quietly and without rancor. “Who can say where treason lies, anymore? Who can say where duty lies? Each must judge for himself. And only those who still can act must try to find the answer. Talk to Ewan MacDonald. He’s a practical Scot and, I think, still unafraid of the right as he sees it.”
“Do you think I am afraid of it?” Robert Leffingwell asked with a sudden sharpness.
“No,” William Abbott said calmly. “That is why I suggest you talk to Ewan MacDonald.”
“Oh, dear!” Krishna Khaleel exclaimed. “Oh, dear!”
On which note, leaving untouched Dolly’s carefully prepared luncheon, the members of the last party at “Vagaries” of the ancien régime bade one another hurried farewells and went somberly and swiftly away, not knowing when, if ever, they would see each other again.
Now he too, at last, felt fear; and the principal cause of it sat across the enormous desk in the Oval Office, staring at him with an impudent and unyielding insolence. The President had demanded his appearance in a furious telephone call at 9 a.m. And now, at approximately 3 p.m., he had condescended to drop by.
It was immediately apparent that he had not been in the least impressed by the furious phone call, nor by the cold and angry expression on the President’s face that had greeted his deliberately tardy arrival. Edward M. Jason simply did not have that kind of credibility anymore; and now, after only a few seconds of conversation with the junior Senator from Wyoming, he was finally beginning to realize it. The knowledge, coming after so many other things, was a shattering moment he did his best to conceal.
Fred Van Ackerman, with the instinct of a ferret, was not fooled.
“Sorry I couldn’t get down here sooner,” he said with airy contrition, adding almost as an afterthought, “—Mr. President.… We’ve been pretty busy on the Hill today, you know, and—”
“Doing what?” the President inquired sharply. The president pro tempore shrugged with an amiably scornful smile.
“Oh, listening to a lot of crap from the likes of Munson, Danta, Hamilton and Smith. That sounds like a second-rate Washington law firm, doesn’t it? Or a run-down vaudeville team.” His expression became suddenly vicious. “Well, that’s what they are, all right. They and their buddies.”
“What were they concerned about?” Ted Jason asked, trying to sound as though he did not know. Fred ignored the pretense.
“You know. You’ve been getting reports. A lot of who-struck-John about your crackdown on the press.”
“Not my crackdown,” the President said with a sudden almost desperate anger. The response was predictable.
“No?” Fred said with an elaborate surprise. “Well, I’m damned. I thought you were the President of the United States. Or—” his expression became innocent and wide-eyed—“has someone else slipped in when you weren’t looking?”
“It was never my intention—” Ted Jason began. But he was interrupted.
“What were your intentions,” Fred Van Ackerman demanded coldly, “when you backed this—” and his voice became mimicking, mocking and singsong—“‘dictatorial, un-American, frightful and abhorrent’ law? When you put in charge of its enforcement ‘one who is completely amoral, ruthless, undemocratic and hostile to all the principles of freedom?’ When you gave him the power, and said and did nothing to stop him, to ‘launch a terrifying assault upon the free media of the United States’ in order to transform its members into ‘whipped lap dogs tethered on chains behind the chariot of Edward M. Jason?’ Where were you when all these things were going on, Mr. President? I thought—” and Fred’s voice became soft and gentle, “that you were right there backing me every inch of the way. That’s what they think on the Hill, Mr. President. How are you ever going to convince them differently? It’s too late now. ’Way, ’way too late. Everything has been done.”
“I order you,” the President said, keeping his voice level with an enormous effort, “to release those men at once and restore them to their rightful positions.”
“They’re in their rightful positions,” Fred said blandly, “being reeducated to support properly, as they should, the peace-loving policies of the greatest President who ever sat in this office. Yes, sir,” he added, looking around with a speculative air that literally raised the hairs on the back of Ted Jason’s neck, “and some office it is, too. Wow, man!” he exclaimed with a subtly sardonic mockery. “Like I mean, it’s great!”
“And it is not to be demeaned,” the President said, still levelly, “by the likes of you. I repeat, I order you to release those men at once and cease
all plans to imprison anyone else. Anyone else, I don’t care what sector of the population he comes from, media, academic, business, labor, whatever. I don’t want anyone else subjected to this. It must stop, or I shall have you arrested, if that’s what I have to do to stop this madness.”
“On what grounds?” Fred inquired reasonably. “For heaven’s sake, on what grounds? Carrying out the law of the land? Administering the authority vested in me by the President of the United States? Doing the job my great President appointed me to do, assisting him in his great peace-loving plans? I swear, you baffle me. I don’t understand what you’re getting at, at all. I just don’t understand what you’re trying to do in this office.”
“I am trying—” the President said, and suddenly he felt a weariness and weight so great upon his head and shoulders that he lost his thought for a moment and quite obviously struggled to find it again as the Senator from Wyoming studied him with a bright and attentive eye. “I am trying—trying to save this nation from collapse and this world from war, and I am under great—great pressures—from—from everywhere. You don’t know,” he said, with an appeal in his voice he hated because he knew it was wasted here, but he did not seem to be able to keep it out, “you just don’t know the pressures I am under.”
“It’s tough,” Fred agreed judiciously, “all over.… Anyway, that doesn’t change our problem, does it? It seems to me it just makes it all the more imperative that you have a united country behind you.”
“But not united by fear!” the President said angrily. “Not united by fear!”
“How, then?” Senator Van Ackerman inquired, still judiciously, still reasonably. “How, Mr. President? Tell me. All I want to do is help.”
Ted Jason started to speak; stopped; studied him with an angry yet somehow supplicating bafflement; and finally spoke with a bitter distaste.
“You really are a monster.”
Fred Van Ackerman uttered a cheerful laugh.
“Everybody seems to be calling me that lately.” He shrugged. “But—here I am, doing the job you appointed me to do. And you haven’t answered my question: how can we unite the country, at this late date, in any other way than we’re doing?”
“You can stop saying ‘we,’ for one thing,” Ted Jason told him sharply. “This is my responsibility, and I am the one to do it.”
“Exactly what I say,” Fred agreed promptly. “And you are, too. Working through me and a few other strong men who don’t flinch from what has to be done.”
“I order you—” the President tried again; but again was interrupted.
“Order me to do what?” Fred demanded with a sharpness and anger of his own. “Order me to let every half-assed columnist and commentator in the country continue to attack you at will? Order me to sit idly by while those bastards on the Times and the Post and all their little buddies around the country try to sabotage and subvert everything you’re trying to do? Order me to step aside and let them come back and block every step you make toward achieving peace in the world? That’s what I’m supposed to do? Maybe you’d better get yourself another boy!”
“Very well,” the President said. “I accept your resignation.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Fred cried with an exasperated harshness. “Oh, no, you don’t! If you want me out of here you’ll have to come right out like a big, brave man and fire me, Mr. President. You won’t trick me into it. You’ll have to do it. So, go ahead. Go ahead, and see what that gets you from your true supporters! Why, listen!” he said scornfully, abandoning the ranting tone in one of his typical lightning changes, “do you want NAWAC in the streets in five minutes rioting against you? Do you want this country really turned into an armed camp? It can be done now, Mr. President, and you know it. You know it. So you just tell me how you want it, and I’ll be happy to oblige.”
And staring with a fierce intensity at Edward M. Jason, he leaned forward and waited for an answer.
From the President, who realized now with a sickening foreclosure of all hope that he had indeed created a Frankenstein’s monster who could no longer be contained, there was, for a few moments, no answer forthcoming. He knew with a chilling sense of vacuum that there was here, for himself and his office, only a basic contempt; and also, even more chilling, the will—and the capability—to shift ground in sheer ruthless self-interest and cause great trouble. He was about to try, as the last resort of desperation, to reason with his antagonist, when his antagonist, in another of his baffling changes of mood and technique, leaned back in a suddenly relaxed and earnest fashion and began to reason with him.
“Really, Mr. President,” he said in a perfectly rational voice, “there is nothing to be gained by our fighting each other—nothing at all. It’s the enemies of America that you and I have to fight—and fight together. Not apart. Not separately. Together. I’ve already taken major and effective steps to stop the most obvious elements opposing you. Now, surely, you don’t want to undo all that and start a great fight inside the Administration, open everything wide up so all the subversives in America can attack us and destroy what we’re trying to do. Surely that isn’t what you want, Mr. President. Surely not. Why, it would be—it would be a hell of a thing. It would tear the Administration to pieces! And furthermore,” he said, leaning forward again in a confidential, man-to-man manner, “think of what it would do to the millions and millions who believe in you, who understand and support your great mission for peace, who want you to succeed because they know that only through your success can America succeed! Why, it would shatter them completely. It would ruin their morale forever. It would destroy them. There wouldn’t be anything or anybody they could believe in. You couldn’t betray them like that, Mr. President! Please don’t, I beg of you! You just couldn’t do it. You just mustn’t Please, Mr. President. Please.”
And earnestly, beseechingly, moved by what could almost seem a fervent conviction, he again stared, with an intensity now humble and deeply concerned, into the troubled eyes across the desk. The moment lengthened.
“Unbelievable,” the President said at last. “Unbelievable.”
“But right, don’t you think?” Fred inquired pleasantly. “You simply cannot betray the people who believe in you, Mr. President. What is the point to your life, if you do?” Again came the blandly insolent look. “Why have you bothered to live?”
“I have bothered to live,” Ted Jason said with a sort of dogged determination, “so that I might do what I could to help my country and the world. Some things haven’t worked out quite—quite as I would want them to do—but that has been my motivation. I am still trying. I cannot accomplish what I must do if—” he shook his head as if to clear it—“if—”
“If all these disruptive elements are attacking and upsetting you,” Fred agreed in a tone soothing, almost fatherly. “Exactly what I’m saying, Mr. President. They must be stopped so they are being stopped. Now you will be free to proceed unhampered and untroubled in the great work you have to do. Now your life will be meaningful and worth living, as few lives, even of Presidents, have been. Isn’t that right? Think about it, Mr. President,” he said softly. “Think about it!”
There was a silence in the Oval Office while Edward M. Jason did think about it, his face somber, seemingly strong yet subtly helpless, his eyes far away. Finally he spoke, so quietly that Fred had to lean forward to catch it.
“I think you had better go.”
Fred stood up promptly.
“Sure, Mr. President.” He held out his hand expansively. “We’ll stop ’em,” he promised with a satisfied conviction. “They won’t bother you anymore.”
The President did not respond, either to the hand or the comment, but remained seated, still staring far away, as the Senator from Wyoming, ignoring the snub, gave him a cheery farewell wave, and left the room.
For perhaps two more minutes the President remained immobile. Then he swung around abruptly and reached for the Picturephone. He had barely touched it when the appointments se
cretary knocked discreetly to inform him that the people he wanted to see were already waiting to see him. Slowly he replaced the phone; nodded; and stood up with a sudden surge of returning confidence and decision that indicated that he saw, at last, some way out of the endless and inexorable tunnel he seemed to be in.
But of course it was not to be.
The road chosen by Edward M. Jason must be traveled to the end.
“Mr. President—” Bob Leffingwell began, and stopped. An uneasy sensation stirred somewhere in the back of the President’s mind and moved rapidly to the front.
“I am glad you have come,” he said quickly, pushing the warning signal aside, concentrating upon their earnest and troubled faces: the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who today, oddly, were wearing full uniform, glittering with medals. “I was about to call you to come here. I have something of the utmost gravity to discuss with you.”
There was a silence.
“And we with you, Mr. President,” Ewan MacDonald MacDonald said finally.
“Oh?” the President asked. “Perhaps you should proceed first.”
“No, Mr. President,” the Secretary of Defense said in a hesitant yet dogged tone. “We think you should.”
The President looked from face to face. His visitors were obviously terribly troubled and uneasy, yet it seemed to him that an obdurate and ominous rigidity possessed them all. The warning signal grew sharper. He fought it down and spoke with the calm conviction he knew he must.
“I must ask your help in regaining control of the government. I have just had a talk with Senator Van Ackerman and it is obvious that he is in a state of almost open rebellion against me. He and his gangs are going to have to be brought under control by sheer physical force, I think. I may have to ask the armed forces to help. I expect you to do so if requested.”
“Mr. President—” Ewan MacDonald began; and stopped.