Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (63 page)

 
          
 
Pym looked behind him, out through the glass
doors. The car still sat at the curb.

 
          
 
An elevator door opened behind the guard, and
a young woman approached the desk. The guard tipped his head at Pym.

 
          
 
The young woman was pretty but hard as nails.
Pym decided she was a case officer assigned to handle kooks.

 
          
 
"I'm Paula Strong," she said.
"May I help you?"

 
          
 
Pym repeated what he had told the guard.

 
          
 
"First of all," said Miss Strong,
"Peter Jennings works in
New York
."

 
          
 
"Of course," Pym said uneasily, for
he had forgotten that all three network news shows originated in
New York
. "I was not demanding a personal
confrontation."

 
          
 
"Second, I'm afraid you'll have to be a
lot more specific before we can put you in touch with any of our senior
people."

 
          
 
"Pretty lady"—Pym flashed what he
hoped was an ingratiating smile—"you have heard perhaps of Colonel
Penkovsky?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"Then you should be being grateful I am
not demanding to see the senior person he insisted on seeing."

 
          
 
"Refresh my memory. Who was that?"

 
          
 
"John F. Kennedy."

 
          
 
"Well, Mister . . . Pinsky, is it? ... I
think it's safe to say that Penkovsky had a lot to offer."

 
          
 
"So, dear lady, I assure you, do I."

 
          
 
Pym smiled again—a sincere, ingenuous
smile—and allowed Miss Strong a long moment to appraise him.

 
          
 
"Follow me," she said, and she
turned toward the elevator.

 
          
 
The last image Pym saw before the elevator
doors slid closed was of the car idling at the curb.

 
          
 
"There is a back way out of this
building?" he asked.

 
          
 
"Sure. Why?"

 
          
 
"People who tell you things like I am
telling you must always know if there is a back way out."

 
          
 
'^There's nothing the Russians like more than
seeing us chase after the little brushfires they start all over the world.
Spend money, send supplies, finance counterrevolutionaries, maybe even send
troops—Christ!—flush the resources of this nation down the John, spend
ourselves into bankruptcy, trying to do the impossible."

 
          
 
Burnham was on a roll. Ideas that he had never
known he had, notions that had never coalesced into ideas, snippets that had
never been articulated into notions—were racing around in his head and leaping
out of his mouth, like passengers abandoning a sinking ship.

 
          
 
The President let him run. He sat back on the
couch and sipped his bourbon and listened.

 
          
 
"What we don't realize is, it doesn't
work! Ever! We're like Pavlov's goddamn dogs: We hear the buzzwords like 'Marx'
and 'socialism' and 'people's republic of any dippy thing,' and right away the
bells ring and we holler '
Russia
!' and threaten to send in the Marines. What
happens? The peasants say to themselves, 'Who needs this?' and they turn to the
guy who isn't hollering at them, and who's that? Bingo.
Russia
.

 
          
 
"Suppose we let them alone, even help
them, maybe we retain some influence over them, maybe we can tug the leash once
in a while to keep them from doing something stupid to their neighbors. But
once we've driven them into the arms of the big bear, we can't say squat about
what they do, so all that's left is to try to overthrow them."

 
          
 
Burnham's mouth was dry. Without thinking to
ask, he walked to the cabinet bar and reached into the refrigerator for a can
of Coke. He seemed not to realize where he was, until he saw the presidential
seal on the glass into which he poured the Coke. "Oh!" he said,
embarrassed. "Sorry. I'm—"

 
          
 
"Go on, go on," said the President.
"I think you're about to have an opinion. You're saying we should let
Honduras
go and be damned?"

 
          
 
"No, sir, I'm not. I'm saying we should
stop pouring money into trying to overthrow everybody. I think we should sit
down and talk to the Hondurans and the Nicaraguans. And the Russians. I think
we should say, 'Do what you want, but here are the limits.' And just like in
Cuba
, the limits are things that could threaten
us or their neighbors, like long-range aircraft and missiles. Then I think you,
sir, just like Jack Kennedy, should go on television and tell the world what
those limits are, nice and reasonable. We'll give them aid, we'll help them
feed their people, we won't interfere with the way they run their lives. If
they want to go socialist, they can go socialist—they can become the people's
republic of ding-dong, that's great—and if the Russians want to pump a lot more
of their own GNP into the effort, so much the better, BUT—if they start
invading people, or if they start importing missiles—and with satellite
technology what it is today we can tell if one of those two-bit colonels has a
boil on his nose—then the world has to know we'll go in there and crush them
like a bug.

 
          
 
"That, Mr. President, is my
opinion." Burnham smiled. "I think."

 
          
 
The President chuckled. He heaved himself off
the couch and went to the bar and poured himself some more bourbon. He came back
and sat down and rolled the ice cubes around the glass with his finger. "I
agree," he said at last.

 
          
 
A wave of pride surged through Burnham. It
felt wonderful.

 
          
 
"We're gonna get our butt kicked."
The President sipped his drink. "Some people gonna say we're running
scared. You know: abdicating the American leadership role, allowing the citadel
of democracy to crumble. All that crap."

 
          
 
"Let them. Right is right, and we're
right." The righteousness of his words tasted bad in Burnham's mouth, so
he added, "Which is easy for me to say since my ass isn't on the
line."

 
          
 
"It will be," the President said
with a smile. "If you're wrong, I'll have you crucify yourself in my
memoirs. You think history'11 bear us out?"

 
          
 
"Who knows? As they say, history is a
fickle strumpet. You play to her, and she gives you a chancre on your
posterity. Look at Truman: One generation thinks he's a disaster, the next
crowns him a folk hero. Coolidge: A nobody until Ronald Reagan fell in love
with him. Every President should have Polonius' advice engraved on his
desk." Burnham stopped, again appalled at himself. "Good God, listen
to who's lecturing! I'm sorry, sir."

 
          
 
"Don't apologize for speaking your
mind."

 
          
 
"No, sir. It's just ... I have trouble
believing I have anything worth saying, let alone defending."

 
          
 
"Let me be the judge. I'll tell you when
it's time to apologize. Can you put together some notes for tomorrow morning?
I'll get the leadership in here around ten."

 
          
 
"Of course."

 
          
 
"I'm not gonna let them off the hook.
They're coming on the line, with me or against me." The President yawned
and looked at his watch. "Sack time," he said, and he stood up. He
put a hand on Burnham's shoulder and walked him toward the door. "Tim, for
a person who thinks he's worthless as a cup of warm spit, you did good. Can you
be proud of yourself?"

 
          
 
"I think so. I intend to try."

 
          
 
"Do, 'cause if you can't be proud of
yourself for this, for helping your President and your country and"—he
waved at the window—"I believe this, all those unborn, well then, you
might's well drop back and punt."

 
          
 
"Thank you, sir." Burnham reached to
open the door.

 
          
 
"Who's Polonius?" the President
asked.

 
          
 
"In Hamlet. You know: 'To thine own self
be true, and it must follow, as night the day, thou canst not then be false to
any man.' "

 
          
 
"That's good. Save it. We're gonna need
all the ammunition we can get. You mentioned Truman. You remember what he said:
'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'?"

 
          
 
"Sure."

 
          
 
"Think you can stand the heat?"

 
          
 
"So far."

 
          
 
"So far!" the President laughed.
"It hasn't even started to get warm yet. But I hope you can, Tim, 'cause
I've got more'n a year to go, and you're gonna be my chief cook."

 
          
 
Before Burnham could reply, the President had
opened the door, ushered him into the hallway and closed the door again.

 
          
 
Burnham stared at the door for a second and
then felt someone watching him. He looked up into the eyes of a gargantuan
Secret Service man who appeared to have had all his motors for facial expression
surgically removed.

 
          
 
Burnham didn't want the Secret Service man to
think he had been expelled from the Oval Office like an Avon Lady or a
Jehovah's Witness, so he said with authority, "He's going to turn in now.
Back to the Mansion."

 
          
 
The agent nodded and reached under his jacket
for a walkie-talkie.

 
          
 
Burnham walked down the hall, past Epstein's
offices, where the night shift of secretaries labored on the banks of humming
copiers, word processors and typewriters. He waved at the secretaries as he
passed, and one of them did a double take when she saw him—surprised, Burnham
assumed, to see that anyone else was working round the clock in the service of
the nation.

 
          
 
He turned at the end of the hall and walked
toward the West Lobby. The building no longer felt forbidding to him. It was
warm and welcoming, a safe haven, a second home. He belonged here.

 
          
 
Maybe Sarah was right about commitment, he
thought. He had found something to believe in, he had done well, had had his
worth affirmed by none other than the President of the United States, and had
been rewarded by a promise of even greater commitment.

 
          
 
He felt alive, involved, important—altogether
better than he had ever felt in his life.