Preserve and Protect (12 page)

“She did?” he asked in genuine surprise, “That I don’t believe.”

She chuckled.

“Neither did I. But it was a nice gesture. She was very vague about Ted when I asked her. I gathered she hadn’t been able to reach him. Nor has anyone else.”

“He seems to be in touch with the press,” Orrin said dryly. “How are the kids?”

“Feeling better. Crystal’s coming along fine and I think Hal has decided to remain with the human race, after all. The doctors say there can be another baby—”

“No, really?” he asked delightedly.

She nodded and squeezed his hand again.

“I thought that might put a spark back in you, Grandpa. Yes, it’s apparently going to be all right, so everybody’s feeling much better. Including Stanley, whom I left in charge.
He
really
doesn’t
want to fight any more.”

He nodded.

“I can’t blame him.”

“So now you need a new campaign manager.”

“Any ideas?”

She gave him a quick glance.

“The same one you have, I expect.”

“I’m not sure I want him,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure it’s going to be conducted in quite the sort of atmosphere in which—”

But even as he spoke the limousine turned and moved into Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House, and at once they became aware of police, strobe lights, television cameras, shouts and cries, a mass of shifting, surging people. As they came closer they could see that its focus was a long line of picketers, young, old, white, black, male, female, bearded, non-bearded, clean, filthy, happily intermingled and swaying in a stomping conga formation along the iron railings in front of the mansion.

Its members carried torches and banners which they displayed eagerly for the encouraging cameras—“GOODBYE, HARLEY, NO MORE WAR!… COMFORT SAYS: NOW’S THE TIME TO STOP THE CRIME!… KEEP DEMANDS AN IMMEDIATE END TO OVERSEAS ENTANGLEMENTS!… END THE WHITE MAN’S WAR!—DEFY.…YOU’RE NEXT, ORRIN—ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO!”

And in measured cadence there came clearly through the soft night air the mocking, triumphant chant:

Air Force One,

What have you done?

Set us free,

Tee hee hee!

“My
God,”
he said with a disgust so deep he had not known it was still there after all these years of shabby guttersnipe outburst in America, “is there no decency left in this land?
Driver!
Take us into the White House!”

“Mr.
Secretary
—” the driver began in alarm, and Beth said,
“Orrin!”

But his face set in an implacable mask and he repeated angrily, “Take us on in. Run them down if they don’t give way!”

But fortunately for all concerned, the White House police had seen them coming, recognized the car, and were already deployed in a flying wedge that opened a path to the West Gate. Through this the limousine moved swiftly, but not before others recognized them too. Stones, eggs, torches slammed against the car, an angry animal howl followed them up the drive. As they stopped beneath the portico, the chanting line converged into a mass that shoved and pushed against the railings. Wild obscenities shattered the placid evening of Pennsylvania Avenue; not for the first time nor the last, but probably never before in such a context.

As they looked back from the top of the steps they could see police deployed along the inside of the fence; see the first clouds of riot gas begin to boil; hear a single, shattering gunshot, the start and finish of a scream.

Dolly Munson met them at the door, her eyes wide with trouble and concern.

“Get inside,” she said, pulling them in. “For God’s sake, get inside!” The dream-city and the real city had come together, and the deceptively peaceful mood, which in Washington is never really very peaceful underneath, was peaceful no more.

5

Two hours later in Spring Valley—SECRETARY KNOX BESIEGED IN WHITE HOUSE, ESCAPES THROUGH UNDERGROUND PASSAGE TO EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING, the early editions said. NEGRO DEMONSTRATOR KILLED IN ANTIWAR PROTEST—his first act was to mix himself a strong Scotch and soda and take it into the den. He had left Beth at the mansion, helping Dolly and the White House physician calm a Lucille Hudson driven almost hysterical by the noise outside. Six State Department security men had come with him and were now staked out discreetly among the trees and bushes. The neighborhood was silent and apparently deserted as midnight neared, but for all practical purposes he was besieged in his own home, too.

He took a deep breath and a deep swallow and put his head back against the well-worn top of the rocker. There he sat for what seemed to him a long time, hardly moving, hardly thinking—at least, not coherently, though a thousand things raced back and forth inside his head. None seemed to make much sense, except that if there had ever been any doubt that he would continue to seek the nomination, the riot had ended it forever. Those who had conceived the insane idea that such tactics might intimidate Orrin Knox did not know Orrin Knox. Yet why did anyone not know Orrin Knox? He had been around long enough.

It was apparent, however, that this would be a dangerous and possibly bloody business. The violence that had disgraced the convention had not died after all: it had only been sleeping for the past four days.

The employment of violence as a political weapon had never been fashionable in America, but increasingly in these last few hectic years the alien idea had been imported that the way to conduct the American democracy was with guns, riots, destruction, assassination. Rioting was no longer the happy, haphazard, idiot-child pastime of looting and burning that had characterized the middle stages of the civil rights campaign. Now it was cold-blooded, deliberate, engaged in by whites and blacks integrated at last in sickness and hatred, organized to capture the mastery of public opinion and the intimidation and downfall of government. Riots now were scientific, purposeful, political—and to the decent and the stable they were terrifying, because they harnessed the animal that crawls from the gutter to the animal that conspires in clandestine rooms.

Of course the pretended purposes were still all noble. But the only real purpose was to destroy the Republic, and finally America’s enemies had devised a technique that could really, conceivably, do it. The idea had never succeeded before because those who spawned it had always been alien. Now they had persuaded native-born to do it for them.

The two cities were one and might never be separate again.

He thought of Lucille Hudson, widowed at the White House in an accident whose true causes nobody yet knew or would probably ever know; he thought of Beth, who could be widowed too; of Crystal and Hal, who had already suffered from the beast let loose; of all the decent ordinary citizens, unprepared for such tactics of internal self-destruction and too basically fair and tolerant to respond in kind. And he wondered what would happen to America, and to him, and to all he treasured and had worked so long and hard to maintain. And once again there came into his mind the thought that had struck him a year ago on the night he had been going through such mental tortures over the offer of Harley’s predecessor to back him for President if he would only abandon his opposition to Bob Leffingwell’s nomination to be Secretary of State.

He had been wandering beneath the Capitol, on the sloping lawn that leads down from the west front to the Mall, the city, and the White House beyond that he had wanted so much—still wanted so much.

He had turned and faced the magnificent old jumble.

The great dome had loomed above him against the deepening sky, shimmering, perfect, white and pure, over the city, over the nation, over the world. On the Senate side the flag slapped lazily in the gentle breeze. Utter peace, utter serenity, lay upon the Hill.

Surprising and sudden, tears came into his eyes.

O America, he thought, and it was like a crying in his heart:
O America!
Why do you suffer us your people, who are such fools, and what have we done to deserve you?

Then he had shaken his head with a quick, impatient movement and gone back up the long flight of steps to defeat Robert A. Leffingwell.…

And
O America!
he thought now, and again it was a crying in his heart:
O my country!
What will become of you in these days when your children hate one another and turn without tolerance and without compassion to rend themselves and you in their insane stupidity and spite?

He realized that tears were in his eyes on this occasion too, even as he realized that one of the security men outside was rapping on the kitchen door with the agreed three knocks. He rose somewhat unsteadily and went to answer. For several moments he found it difficult to focus on the visitor who stepped forward, closing the door quickly behind him.

“Oh,” he said finally. “It’s you. How ironic. I was just thinking of that night—I was just thinking of the night I stood on the lawn below the west front—and looked at the Capitol—and thought about America—and went back in the chamber—and beat you.”

“That was quite a night,” Bob Leffingwell said softly; and held out his hand. “How are you, Orrin?”

“A little shaky, I’m afraid,” the Secretary said, with a laugh that indicated as much; and then returned his visitor’s firm grip. “I’m glad to see you, Bob. I’ve been hoping we could meet soon. Come on in the library. I think”—and again he uttered a rather unsteady little laugh—“I think we’re relatively safe here. Can I get you something to drink?”

“What are you having?” Bob Leffingwell asked. “Scotch? I’ll join you.”

“Good,” Orrin said. “Sit down, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Left alone in a house to which he had never been invited as guest in all the years of their frequent contention, Bob Leffingwell studied it thoughtfully. It looked as he had known it would: solid, erudite, lived-in, comfortable—safe. But nothing was safe on this night, or perhaps ever again in America. He shivered and for a moment he, too, was lost in thought, called back abruptly by his host’s return.

Orrin handed him a glass, picked up his own, sat again in the rocker by the empty fireplace.

“Did you come by the White House?”

“Yes, it’s quiet, now. Some debris in the gutters, all the floodlights on, eight or ten cops still on duty along the fence, but otherwise calm. The Avenue’s quiet, nobody on the Lafayette Park side. I guess they’ve had their fun for the night.”

A wry expression touched the Secretary’s face.

“Oh, the fun’s just beginning. It isn’t every day you run to ground a Secretary of State and a candidate for President. I’m sure we’ll be hearing for the rest of the campaign how I scuttled out with my tail between my legs. But of course it would have been foolhardy to go out the front way.”

“Foolhardy to go in,” Bob Leffingwell suggested with a smile. “But typical.”

“I suddenly got awfully fed up.…Your health.”

“Yours too,” Bob Leffingwell said, and found somewhat to his surprise that he really meant it.

For a moment they drank in silence. The Secretary broke it in a thoughtful tone.

“I’ve just been sitting here wondering where this country’s going.”

“Yes,” Bob said, his face suddenly grim. “You’re not the only one.”

“We’ve managed to survive an awful lot of this mindless irresponsibility in recent years, but there’s an extra viciousness to it now. For the first time in all my years in public life, I feel our enemies may really have us by the throat. And I’ve been thinking whether maybe I’m to blame, and whether I ought not to get out.”

“You weren’t to blame at the convention,” Bob Leffingwell said. “You weren’t to blame tonight. And you won’t get out.”

“No,” Orrin said slowly, “I won’t. But I really wonder how much blame I bear for this. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough to see the other point of view. Maybe I’ve become as rigid and arbitrary as the professional liberals are. It’s an easy, smug, intolerant state of mind to fall into. Maybe they’ve driven me to it in self-defense … or maybe I’m just rationalizing.”

His visitor looked thoughtful.

“No, I don’t think so. They’ve driven me into some unfortunate exaggerations over the years, too. It cuts both ways.”

The Secretary gave him a quizzical glance, half-amused, half-disbelieving.

“I never thought I’d hear you admit it.”

“You probably never thought I’d be honest enough or perceptive enough to even think it,” Bob Leffingwell said dryly. “I got a pretty clear picture of what you think of me during the State Department nomination.”

“Well,” Orrin said, “I believed it to be the correct one at the time. I don’t apologize for it. But people change—opinions change—certainties change. You’ve changed.” He frowned. “I like to think maybe I have, too, I don’t know.” The frown gave way to a wry amusement. “The mellow, aged-in-the-wood Orrin is not visible to a good many of my more violent critics, but he may be there, underneath it all.”

“Oh, yes,” Bob agreed. “You’ve changed.”

“Enough to support for President?” the Secretary asked quickly, and for several moments his visitor looked at him with a thorough, analytical gaze.

“I don’t know yet,” he said slowly. “I really don’t know. Have I changed enough so that you want me to support you?”

“You have politically,” Orrin said promptly, and Bob Leffingwell laughed.

“Blunt, candid, I’ll-be-honest-if-it-kills-me Orrin Knox! How else have I changed—if at all?”

It was the Secretary’s turn for an analytical gaze.

“For one thing,” he said slowly, “we’re both a year and three months older, which should have some effect on a man even at our advanced ages. And for another, I think you have had occasion in the past few months to perceive the nature of some of your journalistic and academic supporters. And for a third, you had the guts to go all out for Harley, and that, in the context of your past life and record and in the context of those who helped to create your reputation, was a hell of a courageous thing to do. I admire you for it very much.”

“I got your note at the hotel. I appreciated it—”

“Even though you did think it was all politics.”

“I thought there might be a little in it,” Bob Leffingwell confessed wryly, “but even so, I appreciated it. After all, you did put it in writing. Yes, I nominated Harley, bless his heart. Just out of sheer kindness, he did everything he could to salvage my career—”

“And I did everything to destroy it,” Orrin said with calculated bluntness, since he thought he might as well test this new Leffingwell right now. His visitor did not take offense.

“No,” he said mildly. “Most of that I did myself, when I led to the Foreign Relations Committee.”

There was a silence in which they could hear a car come along the street; a sharp challenge from one of the security officers; a muffled conversation; the sound of the engine dwindling away. At last the Secretary spoke quietly.

“A hard word to use about oneself. And a very honorable admission. I respect you for it.”

“I don’t say it to everyone,” Bob Leffingwell said with a certain bleakness. “But some people have a right to hear it. You, perhaps, most of all.” He sighed deeply and stared down at his hands. When he spoke again his voice was very low. “You were right to defeat me … and that, too, you have a right to hear.”

Again there was a silence, which his host took a long time to terminate.

“I think I should be very lucky to have you support me,” he said at last. “And very honored, too. And that I would say, I think you can believe me, had you no political influence in the present situation at all.”

“Thank you,” Bob Leffingwell said quietly. “I do believe you.… I suppose you wonder why I really came here tonight.”

Orrin smiled and the tension eased a little.

“I’ll admit I’m a little curious.”

“Well, basically,” Bob said in a lighter tone, “I wanted to. But in addition to that, two ladies told me to.”

“Oh?”

“One was Helen-Anne—”

“She would,” Orrin said, and they smiled at one another, probably the first genuine smile they had exchanged in several years.

“And the other was Ceil Jason.”

“Oh?”
Orrin said softly. “Well, I’m damned.”

“Yes,” Bob Leffingwell agreed. “So was I.”

“Surely she didn’t tell you to support me—”