by Allen Drury
Knowing the answers as they did, all were somewhat prepared for, though unable to reconcile themselves to, the events of that tense, unhappy day.
2
At the entrance of the Delegates’ Lounge they met as they had so often met before: the ambassadors of Great Britain, France and India and the leaders of the delegation of the United States. This time, as always, voices hesitated in the crowded chamber, eyes swiveled, thoughts were distracted as attention focused feverishly on the little group that stood, its members somewhat awkward, embarrassed and hesitant with one another, just inside the door of the enormous many-windowed room.
For a moment they eyed one another somewhat warily. Then Lord Claude Maudulayne stepped forward cordially and held out his hand to Ceil.
“Madam Ambassador, may I congratulate you most sincerely upon your appointment. You add a note of grace and beauty desperately needed in these drab and difficult corridors.”
“Oh, my, yes!” Krishna Khaleel exclaimed fervently. “You are much the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to the United Nations, Mrs. Jason. Much the most beautiful!”
“And possibly,” Raoul Barre said dryly, “the most intelligent. Lafe, we are delighted to have you with us again.”
“Yes, indeed,” Krishna Khaleel agreed. “Even on so”—he paused delicately—“so difficult an occasion.”
“Which you will no doubt make even more difficult, K.K.,” Lafe said. “How about finding a chair for the most beautiful ambassador in the world?”
“We usually have good luck by the window,” Claude Maudulayne suggested, offering Ceil his arm, which she accepted with a smile. And now chatting and joking in their old, relaxed way despite the uneasy tensions that underlay their persiflage, they moved across the room through many smiling faces and warmly extended hands which Ceil took with a series of dazzling smiles that obviously overwhelmed their intently observing audience.
When they were seated with their coffee at a table looking north upon the bleak frozen river and the bleak winter city, she tossed her long blonde hair back from her face and looked at Lord Maudulayne with an ironic expression.
“I would like to be able to accept the congratulations, except that for the moment I’m here under somewhat shaky pretenses. I haven’t been confirmed yet, you know.”
“But surely,” the British Ambassador said, turning to Lafe, “there’s no doubt—?”
“No,” Lafe said, looking annoyed. “Just a nasty debate from a few hotheads, probably, leaving a bad taste in everybody’s mouth and casting a sour shadow on her first day here. It’s too bad.”
“Of course,” K.K. suggested in a wistful tone, “if things were not so—so unhappy right now, there would be no need for a nasty debate, would there? And of course if dear Orrin had not been so—so precipitate …” His voice trailed away, still wistful. Lafe took him up on it sharply.
“Now, see here, K.K.: spare me more of this pious stuff from India. The issue is massive new aggression by the Soviet Union and China which Orrin felt he had to stop. I agree with him and so does Mrs. Jason.”
“But not, I think,” Raoul Barre observed gently, “a majority of the United Nations. Have you seen the Soviet resolution?”
“We just got in,” Lafe said. “Have you seen ours?”
“No,” the French Ambassador admitted, “but I doubt if it has much of a chance.”
“There is, of course,” Claude Maudulayne said, “the matter of the blockade. If it were not for that, possibly—”
“No ‘possibly,’” Lafe said, “no way. We’re licked on this already, Claude, we always have been, as long as the world is upside down as it is. But we have to keep trying to reassert a little perspective into the historical record, even if it means another lengthy review of exactly why we are in Gorotoland and Panama, and exactly why the Russians and the Chinese are attempting to drive us out.”
“There’s no time for that,” Raoul Barre remarked. “The mood is too ugly and the impatience with the United States too great. It is regrettable, Mrs. Jason, that you must face such hostility as you are going to face on your first day here. But as Ambassador Khaleel says, the misfortune arises from your own President.”
“How can you say that?” she asked quietly, studying him carefully with her beautiful dark eyes. “He acted in response to aggression, he didn’t start it.”
“But initially—” Raoul Barre began. She leaned forward.
“No, not ‘initially,’ Mr. Ambassador. You know what happened initially. Why try to pretend it was not so?”
“Madam Ambassador—” he began.
“Mr. Ambassador,” she said. “You tell me why you pretend it was not so.
“Oh,” he said with a sudden impatience, “we know about the attacks on your missionaries in Gorotoland, the interference with your attempts to find oil and gain a monopoly on it. We know you are afraid of another possible Communist take-over on your doorstep in Panama, of possible Communist control of the Canal. We know all about those things. They do not matter here.”
“The truth has to matter somewhere,” she said.
“Not here,” Lafe agreed dourly. “Not here. And the issue wasn’t oil, as you very well know, Raoul. It was murder of defenseless people. And it isn’t because we want to benefit ourselves alone that we want to internationalize the Canal and keep it out of Communist hands. Sure, we have an interest in our own security—I should hope—but many more things enter into it.” He shook his head and shrugged in sudden disgust. “But you know all that. You know all that. And you’re right: it doesn’t matter here.”
“Then where does it?” Ceil asked quietly. “Where will it, ever?”
“If the Communists succeed in taking the world,” Lafe said glumly, “it never will anywhere. All opposing historical records will be destroyed, all opposing books will be burned, a new history will be written. I can see it now—The New History, subtitled The Death of the Mind.”
“If, then, as you imply,” Raoul Barre said with some asperity, “it is so vital for the views of the United States to prevail if freedom is to be saved, why does the United States so constantly put itself in a position to be so effectively attacked by our Communist friends? Why do you do things such as Orrin has just done?”
“Such as Orrin has just done, my God!” Lafe exclaimed angrily. “This is new history, and instant history, with a vengeance. Who launched the new offensive in Gorotoland and Panama, just yesterday? Who reignited the wars? Who took the actions to which the President is only responding? My God, how can you people here do such instantaneous forgetting?…But of course,” he said more quietly, “you don’t. You know. It’s just that to face up to the Communists is too difficult, too dangerous, too likely to create obligations for counteraction that you just don’t want to contemplate and undertake. You don’t want to remember history, even the history of literally yesterday, because to remember would require action against those responsible. And you are afraid.”
“And what does the United States offer,” Raoul demanded, while around the room, observing their now tense and solemn faces, many paused to whisper and to watch, “to help us not be afraid? Withdrawals everywhere in the past few years, arms cutbacks, reduced military strength, inability to enforce your policies, increasing weakness in the face of Communist advances, simple lack of preserving the armed strength required to keep yourselves effective in the world. Why should we join you in strong actions opposing the Communists when you have so little left to oppose them with yourselves? You can’t help yourselves, let alone help us. Why should we endanger ourselves for you? You are no longer able to protect us from the consequences.”
“We are still able to react decisively,” Lafe said, controlling his temper with an obvious effort, “and we are doing so. Any nation which bases its policies upon the assumption that we will fail will be making a grievous mistake, I assure you. We continue to have a strong President with the will to act, and from now on, I believe, things are going to get better.�
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“Better for what?” Lord Maudulayne inquired moodily, and at his side the Indian Ambassador echoed, “Yes, yes! Better for what?”
“Better for all of you,” Lafe said bluntly, “because without us, still, what would become of you?”
“It is very kind of America, dear Lafe,” Krishna Khaleel said lightly, “to save us all so regularly, and with such modesty. I suppose it can only happen because America never stops to ask us if we want to be saved—at least, from whatever it is America seems to think she is saving us. My government is not worried about the Communists, because we are not aligned with anyone. India will survive to watch you all go down, if that should be the case, though of course we do not wish it for anyone. Still, history you know”—his tone trailed off—“it does carry certain built-in dangers for those too proud and too arrogant.…”
“You see what you are up against,” Lafe said to Ceil. “It will be an education.”
“It is already,” she said with a humorless little smile. “I feel I’m getting a cram course, right here.”
“I hope it is preparing you for the next few hours,” Lafe said grimly, “because they aren’t going to be easy.”
“How is Jimmy Fry, old boy?” Claude Maudulayne inquired, deliberately changing the subject to the one he knew would distract his angry colleague from America. At the mention of the handsome, retarded son whom the late Senator Harold Fry of West Virginia, then chief U.S. delegate, had in effect bequeathed to Lafe, the expression of the Senator from Iowa softened and became less tense.
“He’s still up the Hudson at Oak Lawn sanitarium, but I’m going to bring him down to Washington tomorrow. I’ve got a new house on Foxhall Road, you know, and the doctors say it would probably be better for him to be there with me.”
“A house?” Krishna Khaleel inquired archly. “For bachelor Lafe, that dashing Romeo of Washington and the UN? Is there something in the wind that we don’t know about?”
“Dashing Romeo,” Lafe said, “is running down. I’m getting too old, K.K. Anyway, I’ve seen quite a bit of Mabel Anderson during the campaign, and I think she may be coming back to Washington pretty soon.”
“You know it!” K.K. said in a delighted tone, genuinely pleased by the thought of Mabel Anderson, widow of the late Senator Brigham Anderson of Utah, dead by his own hand during the bitter Senate battle over the first nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State, eighteen months ago. “Lafe, how wonderful for you! We will all be so pleased. When is the wedding?”
“Keep it to yourself, K.K.,” Lafe cautioned hastily, “and the rest of you, too, please. Strictly confidentially, she’s coming in next week and we expect to be married in a private ceremony as soon thereafter as it can be arranged.”
“Congratulations,” Raoul Barre said. “She is a very sweet girl.”
“A very fine one,” Lord Maudulayne agreed. “And a very fine thing you will be doing, for her, for yourself, for her daughter and for Jimmy. I know Kitty will join me in wishing all of you every possible happiness.”
“Thank you, Claude,” Lafe said. He shook his head, his expression abruptly somber again. “In such an era,” he said as if to himself. “In such an era!”
“Shall we go in?” Raoul suggested pleasantly, ignoring his sudden change of mood. “It is almost time. Madam Ambassador”—he stood up with a gallant little bow and a charming smile—“will you deign to go in with France?”
“Perhaps I should ask the State Department what it will commit me to, first,” she said with an answering smile, rising and taking his proffered arm.
“Nothing too permanent,” Raoul said cheerfully, “because the debate is likely soon to separate us again.”
“Ha!” she said, giving him a quizzical look. “At least you’re honest.”
“All of us here try to be,” Krishna Khaleel said, burbling along behind as they made their way slowly out through the crowded room to join the colorful throng of the nations moving toward the Security Council. “We all try to be!”
“I’m afraid I am not so generous, K.K.,” Lord Maudulayne remarked with a wry little chuckle. “I would not agree that all of us try.”
Two hundred miles to the south, standing at his front center desk on the aisle to face the poised pencils and skeptical faces of the reporters who gathered there each noon for the regular pre-session press conference, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate found himself as gloomy and filled with foreboding as his young colleague from Iowa up at the United Nations.
He was uneasy, Bob Munson confessed to himself, uneasy and even apprehensive, for he did not know what this new Senate would do. Orrin’s margin of victory had been so narrow that he had barely managed to retain control of the Senate—and the control was only nominal, based on party label, not on any infusion of new Senatorial blood that would look kindly on his policies. It would be slippery going, the Majority Leader told himself: mighty slippery going. And the first step on the uncertain road would come right now in his opening remarks to the media, whose members were obviously ready to go for him with all the knives at their command.
“Senator,” UPI said, leading off the questioning, “we hear there’s going to be a real battle over the leadership. Are you confident you’ll win?”
“I’m always confident,” he said comfortably. “That’s my job. You boys and girls know that.”
“You don’t think your stand on the wars will have an adverse effect on your candidacy, then,” the Times suggested.
“It may,” he agreed calmly, “but that will have to be determined when we vote.”
“We hear a lot of the members are very upset by the latest turn of events,” the Post said.
“I’m very upset by Communist aggression myself,” he said promptly. There was a stirring in the group clustered around his desk and he thought he heard Warren Strickland, seated just across the aisle, suppress a snort.
“I think U.S. aggression is more to the point,” the Post said severely. Bob Munson studied him for a moment with deliberate skepticism.
“Oh, do you. Well, I don’t. I like to keep my priorities where they belong, not get them all mixed up for ideological purposes. The Communists moved first.”
“Wasn’t that because they felt world peace would be better served if they moved swiftly to terminate our meddling in Gorotoland and Panama, before it did any more damage, Senator?” the Los Angeles Times inquired.
“So they say,” Bob Munson agreed. “So they say.” He looked at the clock over the Vice President’s desk with a sudden interest. “What else do you people have on your minds today?”
“Is there anything more important, Senator?” Walter Dobius snapped. The Majority Leader gave him a slow and thoughtful look.
“Why, Walter, whatever you say is important no doubt is important. But right now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do a little politicking.”
And he gave them a cheerful smile and stepped across the aisle, shouldering them aside until they stepped back with annoyed looks and let him through. As he bent down to murmur in Warren’s ear he was aware that they were off up the center aisle to Arly Richardson’s seat. The stringy, acerbic old senior Senator from Arkansas had just come in. Around him the dutiful and the anticipatory were flocking.
“Am I going to make it?” he asked Warren quietly. The Minority Leader frowned and shook his head.
“I don’t know, Bobby. It’s going to be very close. I wish I could help you, but it’s the majority’s problem. And you know what your caucus did this morning. For the first time in a couple of decades—”
“Yes,” Bob Munson nodded glumly. “No endorsement of me or Arly—everybody for himself—‘an open vote on the floor according to each Senator’s conscience,’ as that new kid from Oregon put it. Which means not a vote on the leadership, but a vote on the war issue. And the same thing in the House caucus, so Bill tells me. It’s wide open. We aren’t the issue, the wars are the issue.”
“Senator,” the Ti
mes broke in with a certain relish, coming back down the aisle, “Senator Richardson says he has enough votes to beat you for the leadership.”
“Claiming isn’t winning,” Bob Munson said, returning to his desk as the rest swarmed back upon him too. “Why don’t you all go and talk to the Vice President? He looks new and lonely up there.”
But just at that moment, as he had known from the clock that it would, the buzzer sounded for the opening of the session and they hurried off the floor and back to the Press Gallery above the Vice President’s head, there to watch with shrewd, sophisticated (if not altogether unprejudiced) eyes the drama to be played out upon the floor below. Many had liked him over the years, their relations had been quite cordial most of the time, but they were after him now. Some few still remained friendly, but the most influential had chosen their side in the conflict with the Communists.
It wasn’t his.
Cullee rapped the gavel with a sudden force that disclosed his nervousness on his first day of presiding over the Senate, and said, “The Senate will be in order! The Clerk will call the roll for a quorum!” in a voice that he hoped was calmer than he felt.
Quorum completed, ninety-nine Senators, exclusive of Lafe, in their seats, an air of tense expectancy began to settle over the chamber. He called on the chaplain to deliver the prayer. Full of fervent appeals to duty in a troubled time, it ended on a note of ringing exhortation to save and preserve the Republic. Those who had a goodly share of the responsibility for doing so looked about them expectantly. Tension grew.
“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, rising slowly to his feet.
“The distinguished Majority Leader,” Cullee said, and somewhere among the newcomers somebody murmured audibly, “But not for long.”
“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, ignoring the little titter that swept the chamber, “before we get into the business which will occupy us principally today”—he turned and looked, slowly and with apparent complete composure, at his colleagues all around—“namely, the selection of a Majority Leader, and consideration of the President’s request for an additional ten billion dollars for the defense establishment, I would like to ask the indulgence of the Senate to take up one nomination, which I hope we can speedily pass upon.