Preserve and Protect (14 page)

“No more do we need you to instruct us, Walter boy,” Senator Van Ackerman said swiftly. “So that puts us all on a level, doesn’t it?”

There was a silence during which LeGage stared out the window at the innocent Blue Ridge with a fearful scowl; Fred examined their host with a bland innocence; and Rufus sat like a large wax lump. Finally Walter fell back, with as much dignity as he could manage at the moment, upon the inquisitive protections of the reporter.

“What do you intend to do?” he asked in a tone he tried to make deliberately impersonal. “What can I write about your plans?”

“Oh, no, you don’t—” ’Gage began with a reviving vehemence but he was stopped by an unexpected comment.

“Ve haff,” said Rufus Kleinfert heavily, “our methods.”

“That’s right, Walter,” Fred Van Ackerman said. “Ve haff, indeed. And ve don’t vant to tip our hands, either, do we, Rufe, old boy?”

“You are not funny,” Rufus said with a ponderous disapproval. “I regret KEEP must work with you.”

“But you must, mustn’t you?” Senator Van Ackerman asked with his cruel pleasantness.

“If it vere not for varrss and more varrss,” Rufus Kleinfert said, “these damnable varrss, ve vould go our own vay. As it iss, ve haff—Governor Jason seems to us the best candidate to remove us from these foreign entanglements and restore us to traditional Americanism and non-intervention in other people’s quarrels.”

“We’re with you there, Rufe, boy,” Fred Van Ackerman said heartily. “That’s what we want every time, traditional Americanism and non-intervention in other people’s varrss. Particularly in Gorotoland and Panama.”

“Anywhere,” Rufus Kleinfert said heavily. “Anywhere.”

“But particularly Gorotoland and Panama,” Senator Van Ackerman said.

“That iss where it iss right now,” Rufus Kleinfert said with a shrug. “That iss where ve make our protest.”

“And what will this protest be?” Walter Dobius demanded, suddenly fed up with this by-play among the psychotic. “Another pack of cutthroats like your friends at the convention? An attempt to assassinate Orrin Knox? Tell me,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “I may want to write a column.”

But these hostile witticisms were not what his guests appreciated, apparently, for all three gave him sudden ominous looks, so uniform in their staring, almost childish savagery, that under any other circumstances he would have laughed. Now, for some reason, he did not.

“Don’t get too funny, Walter buddy,” Senator Van Ackerman said at last in a softly threatening tone. “Things are going to happen in America that you just don’t dream of in your nice liberal circles. You just think it’s all a nice, sweet little intellectual game, don’t you? You always have, you and your—sweet-smelling friends, playing fast and loose with America just so you could make points at Washington cocktail parties and tell one another in New York how mincy-pincy”—his mouth curled in a savagely sarcastic and unpleasant fashion—“just how rootsy-tootsy, smart-ass brilliant you all are. Well, let me tell you, Walter boy”—his voice dropped to a menacing quietness—“let me tell you, things are getting into the hands of the people who
really
know what’s best for America, now. You and your crowd have served your purpose, you’ve paved the way, you’ve conned the boobs and conditioned them to accept any lie if it’s smooth enough, you’ve told them what to believe and made them so confused they don’t know which way is up. You’ve done your job, Walter boy: you’ve paved the way for
us.
And now,” he concluded softly, “here—we—are.”

“I think,” Walter Dobius said presently, “that you are all mad—literally, certifiably insane.”

But again he had apparently said the wrong thing, for suddenly LeGage had his arm in a grip so tight that it brought tears to his eyes, and he realized that he—he, Walter Dobius, America’s greatest philosopher—statesman of the press—was being shaken like a rag doll by the angry young Negro who towered over him.

“You just write your columns, white man,” ’Gage said with a terrifying gentleness, “and don’t worry about us, okay? Just don’t worry about us, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Yess,” Rufus Kleinfert agreed with an impassive stare. “That vould be best.”

“Because you see, white man,” LeGage said, and suddenly a cigarette lighter had appeared in his free hand, he had snapped it aflame and was holding it an inch from the beautiful colonial-style drapes that framed the innocent Blue Ridge, “it isn’t just slums that burn down and dirty black people who get killed. Nice homes can burn too, and nice, clean white people can get killed. So you just do your job like we say and we’ll do ours, okay?”

“If you don’t put that lighter out at once,” Walter said, his voice a strange combination of fury and fright, “I shall call the police and have you committed.”

“Why, sure,” LeGage said, extinguishing the mechanism and dropping it in his pocket, at the same time releasing Walter with a shove. “But you can’t stay around and guard the place all the time, can you?”

There was a long silence during which none of them said anything. Senator Van Ackerman staring at him with a brightly interested look, LeGage studying the richly comfortable room with a coolly impersonal thoroughness, Rufus sitting like a large wax lump. Finally Walter spoke, with whatever shreds of self-respect fortified by ego remained to him.

“I shall do as I think best about this nomination,” he said, breathing heavily but sounding more like himself again. “It is inevitable, of course, that I shall support Governor Jason. But I shall not do so under threat, and I shall do so in my own time and my own way. And I warn you that if you continue on the path of violence that you started at the convention, you will destroy him and everything you want to achieve, because the heart of America is still strong and decent and a majority of her people will ultimately turn upon and destroy you, if destruction is your aim.”

“My, my,” Fred Van Ackerman said with a cheerful grin, “if you don’t sound just like Orrin Knox. Come on, fellows, on that note I think we’d better leave. ‘Semper Fidelis’ is getting so loud I can’t hear myself think.”

And he got up and started for the door without a glance at his host.

“Don’t come back,” Walter said coldly as the others did the same.

“Only to start a fire, baby,” LeGage said over his shoulder. “If you convince us it’s necessary.”

“Yess,” said Rufus Kleinfert.

For a good many minutes after Fred had gunned the car down the curving drive and the last traces of its angry sound had died upon the heavy afternoon air, America’s leading philosopher-statesman of the press remained where he was, one hand upon the drapes, staring without really seeing at the lovely rolling countryside that he had so often gazed upon as restorative for a soul made weary by the burdens of guiding his country on her wayward course. Everything in Walter Dobius had been affronted in the conversation just closed, his pride, his ego, his intelligence, his wisdom, the integrity of his writing and his work, the love he had—perhaps his only conscious love—for his beautiful old home.

The men who had come to that home this afternoon meant exactly what they said, of that he had no doubt. They were not afraid of violence, they wanted violence, and if he opposed them, they would use violence upon him. A sudden vision of smoke rising from the toppled pillars of “Salubria” made him half cry out in anguish and rage. A moment later—for Walter in his own odd way loved his country too—a wider emotion entered his heart, an even more rending concern.

O America!
he thought, ironically echoing, though he would never know it, the man he most feared and mistrusted in American politics—
What is going to happen to you? What are they going to do to you, these dreadful worthless beings?

Now, hours later, after dinner and, for the first time in many years, after a difficult and futile attempt to start a column, he was sitting at his desk coming finally and irrevocably to the conclusion that something more overriding than immediate political concerns must be attended to. He had seen the White House riot on television and it had appalled him. There was no question in his mind that his visitors had gone immediately from “Salubria” to organize it.

In quick succession he made two calls to California. The first produced only the bantering disbelief of a candidate obviously unshakable in his conviction that he was once again master of everything, threatened by nothing. Walter did not stay with it long.

“You are foolish,” he told Ted Jason bluntly after five minutes of pointless fencing, “and you will know it before long.”

“Don’t let it get you down, Walter,” Ted advised, unimpressed. “Mad Freddie called me a little while ago and I told him to cool it. I said I didn’t want their support and would repudiate it outright if there was any more violence such as occurred at the White House.”

“‘Any more?’” Walter demanded. “Why do you need any more?”

But the Governor apparently didn’t hear that, remarking with some satisfaction, “I made it very clear to him, I think.”

“Was he impressed?” Walter asked dryly. Ted gave a confident little laugh.

“He sounded quite well-behaved.”

“Guard yourself,” Walter said solemnly. “Guard all of us.”

“My, how scary you sound,” Ted told him in a jocular tone. “Maybe you’d better write a column. Isn’t that how you usually work out your fears and frustrations?”

“You are foolish,” Walter repeated, “and you will know it before long.” But of course this produced nothing more than one or two more light-hearted, self-confident japes, and without bothering to be courteous about it, because why should he, Ted didn’t deserve it, he hung up.

Immediately after, he had placed his second call. It had not come through yet, but he was waiting. He thought the chances were reasonably good that it might, though he and the recipient had never been more than arms-length acquaintances, for all that they had spent so many years in Washington running the country together.

Down the lake someone was laughing again in the crisp, high air. A late boat or two, port and starboard lights aglow, skimmed the black waters with a muted nighttime roar. There were sounds of distant music, and the babble of parties. Television and radio sets had finally been silenced. Most of Tahoe’s visitors had suffered a surfeit of solemn voices, solemn scenes, funereal music and the long, sad pomp of Presidential mourning. One could absorb only so much of that and then it was time to live again. The pre-interment rites were, as always, oppressive, and overdone.

This would not, he suspected now as he sat once more alone in the glider on the porch, have been the wish of Harley Hudson, who had always been the simplest and most unpretentious of men. But it was the self-conscious and perhaps somewhat guilty tribute some of the networks felt they had to pay to a man whom, living, they had more often than not opposed, attacked and generally demeaned with every electronic, photographic and verbal weapon at their command. That their ostentatious solemnities at heart really represented relief rather than regret the President was ironically aware, and he was sure Harley would have been aware of it too. They could have had a good laugh about it, if Harley were here.

But of course if he were here, the President would not be, and wouldn’t that be a happy, desirable thing? He was already looking back wistfully to the day before yesterday as though it were a million years ago. He had managed, by the sheer immovable determination that had always made Mr. Speaker so formidable a figure, to maintain his situation out here and give himself an amazing degree of privacy in which to think and plan; but it was a fragile refuge and he knew it would last very little longer. He must go back, and speedily. Events of recent hours had decided that.

Like many responsible men on this deeply disturbing night, he wondered what would happen to his country, and wondered with an extra gravity that no other man could have since his was the power and responsibility to meet whatever came. William Abbott was not a man to be stampeded by events, but it was very clear that there would be demanded of him, in many areas, much more than the Administration’s opponents sought to restrict him to when they used the patronizing and detractive term, “the Caretaker President.” The phrase was a deliberate attempt to hedge him about psychologically in the minds of his countrymen and sharply narrow his range of action. It would take more than that to do it, he thought grimly now. Even if he had wanted to hide from his responsibilities, which he most certainly did not, events had already proved they would not permit it.

Shortly after talking to Lucille, which he had done as soon as she had been sufficiently calmed after the riot, he had decided to fly from Reno at eight a.m. tomorrow. His first impulse had been to switch on the intercom to the press cabin and make the announcement himself, for whatever drama it might give the weary crew who were trying so desperately to extract the last ounce of news from their Tahoe vigil. Then a sudden self-protective caution, such as he had never known before but which was to accompany him now wherever he went, stopped his hand.

Ten minutes later the Press Secretary was announcing to the poker players, the late story writers and the casually drinking gossipers, that they could look forward to a departure from Tahoe at nine a.m. They would fly from Sacramento at noon, the secretary said, shaking his head with a blandly significant leer when besieged with the excited assumption that the President would stop to confer with the Governor of California. Meanwhile the President was arranging with the Secret Service and the Secretary of Defense to be taken by casually disguised motor launch to the north shore, and from there to Reno, where he would depart at eight a.m. “Me and Abe Lincoln,” he remarked with a wry distaste to the Secretary as their conversation concluded. “We have to sneak into Washington by the back door.”

But that, at the moment, was the more sensible part of valor; and while he had always been a brave man, with that pragmatic acceptance of risk that goes with public life under the best of conditions, there was no point in being a fool right now. Fools of a more sinister kind were abroad in the land, and there was no predicting what new insanity they might produce if given the opportunity. There were necessary risks and needless risks, and perhaps at this particular moment announcing his routes and times too explicitly was one of the latter. He did not like the deception, but it made sense until the country had a chance to calm down a little.