Preserve and Protect (21 page)

In the wild confusion of the next fifteen minutes, reporters and cameramen stationed high on the approaches to Arlington Cemetery were able to discern and transmit to a horrified nation the fact that several of the cars in the opposing group were emblazoned with the flaming torch of KEEP, the clenched fist of DEFY, the stylized white dove of COMFORT; that their passengers, shouting wild obscenities at the Presidential party, were composed about equally of whites and blacks; that the placard affixed to the top of the hearse made clear the purpose of this ghastly intrusion—SYLVESTER SMITH, NEGRO: KILLED AT THE WHITE HOUSE IN OPPOSITION TO THE HUDSON-KNOX WARS. GOING TO A HERO’S GRAVE IN ARLINGTON—and that the hobbledehoy crew in their screeching vehicles, might be perilously close to achieving the intent described in the savage chant that soon filled a hundred million homes:

“INTO THE DITCH, YOU SON OF A BITCH! INTO THE DITCH, YOU SON OF A BITCH! INTO THE DITCH, YOU SON OF A BITCH! INTO THE DITCH, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

That the late President’s coffin was spared this final horror was due in major part to the quick thinking of his successor, who sprang from his limousine and shouted to the stunned military to close in and protect the caisson, his own and the immediately following cars. It was also due to the drivers of the matched grays, who somehow managed to hold rein on their terrified animals (that evening they would tell their wives that they had thought their arms would be torn from their sockets; but it had to be done, and so they did it); and to the fact that after the first few seconds of stunned disbelief, the military and police did move, the ranks did close, the procession was protected and the invaders were driven off. By some miracle that he was later to thank God for, the President was able to make his own roar of “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” heard above the mêlée, and no one did: the invaders were robbed of the martyrdom they would dearly have loved to provoke. But tear gas and nerve gas were available, and were used; and after some fifteen minutes of chaos, they scuttled back to their cars and screeched away toward the cemetery, up the hill and out of sight among the trees, to the spot where, a few minutes later, dutifully recorded by a section of the television crews and reporters who had been quickly reassigned by their alert and fast-thinking superiors to cover this ghastly side show, Sylvester Smith, a veteran of his nation’s foreign wars and domestic agonies, was laid to rest.

After such an interruption, the ceremonies for Harley Hudson were concluded under a terrible psychological burden. His wife and family were so close to hysteria that the President was not sure they were going to get through the brief interment without losing control completely. He himself, phlegmatic though he was by nature and deliberate self-discipline, was shattered as he had rarely been in all his life. There hung over the committal of President Hudson’s remains to earth a sadness beyond words and very nearly beyond bearing. It communicated itself to the country, where decent citizens wondered with a horrified dismay what was going to happen to America; a wonder made even more frightening when the parallel coverage of the two funerals in Arlington was lent a final terrible note. It was announced about an hour after the cortège had returned to the White House and dispersed that two men wearing masks had run past the sentries at the grave, splashed a bucket of black paint on the headstone and tossed upon the plain white sarcophagus a placard bearing the words, scrawled in blood (of an ox, laboratory analysts at Bethesda Naval Hospital reported later):

SO DIE ALL WAR MAKERS.

8

Out of such horrors the President spoke to his countrymen at nine-thirty that evening, and it was declared, by those who declare such things, that 210,637,209 citizens of the unhappy Republic sat before their television sets and watched him do it. Such statistics were then, as always, a little difficult to prove, but had there been anyone moving in the streets of the hushed cities and the quiet towns, or in the vast empty reaches where only the twinkling lights of an occasional ranch house broke the deepening dusk, he would have seen that the land was silent and listening as it had rarely listened before.

So, too, was the world, linked by satellite into an audience that stretched from Tierra del Fuego to Tibet from the Cape of Good Hope to Baffin Bay. Wherever men lived, they heard on the “Voice of America” the terse sentences and calm, unhurried tones of the Chief Executive who now led the nation most of them either feared, despised, ridiculed or deplored; and for this he was grateful because he wanted, as he had told Bob Leffingwell a couple of hours ago, to give it to them straight, so that no one anywhere would have any doubts about his intentions, his ideas, or his character. His decision to spell it out beyond mistake had been made in the limousine riding back to the White House with a Lucille Hudson once again on the edge of collapse, and a sister whose white face and strained expression epitomized for him what he knew must be the reaction of millions upon millions of his countrymen. The majority of them, he knew, were decent people, inclined to look upon the world with good will, not perfect always, not tolerant always, sometimes impatient and erratic in their judgments and emotions, but still basically goodhearted and well-meaning. The America they had known—or, idealistically, had liked to think they had known, under all the shabbiness and dross of recent decades—was being whirled away from them by ruthless and despicable men. He could sense that his sister for the first time was genuinely frightened for her country, with a terror and uncertainty she had never felt before. And he knew that many millions—still, he hoped, the great majority—of his fellow Americans felt an equal concern in the face of the acts of the evildoers.

To him fell the task of reassurance. His instinct for timing told him it must be done at once. His instinct for a good speech, the realities of politics and what he believed to be the ultimate good of his country told him whom he should get to help him. Five minutes after commending Lucille to the care of her family and the Munsons, he had detached Orrin Knox from the somber group of dispersing officials and taken him off to the upstairs study. Five minutes after that a startled but perforce compliant Orrin was putting through a call to Arlington Ridge Road. Half an hour after that a startled but perforce compliant Robert A. Leffingwell had joined them. Together they began to draft the speech.

Very promptly, the task broadened.

“I’m going to reassure ’em,” he remarked thoughtfully, “but I’m also going to tell a few people here and abroad a few home truths. This is my first speech since taking office and I’m going to let ’em have it. I want to cover violence and the foreign picture and the nomination and a few other things, while I’m at it.” He gave a sudden grim little smile. “May not be here tomorrow. Never know, nowadays.”

He had then left them and gone off to the State Department for the diplomatic reception scheduled for four p.m., telling Orrin to stay where he was.

“Give Walter Dobius and friends something to think about,” he said in the same grimly humorous vein. “They’ll wonder where you are. If they only knew. And if they only knew who you’re working with. Right, Bob?”

“Right,” Bob Leffingwell said, not looking too comfortable, the President thought. He paused at the door.

“If you’re not happy about it, Bob, you can go home. No law says you have to stay.”

“Oh, no,” Bob said quickly. “I didn’t say I was unhappy, Mr. President. I’m still a little numb at being asked to be here, but—if that’s what you want—”

“It’s what I want,” the President said. “We won’t tell anybody.” He turned to the Secretary of State. “Orrin?”

Orrin looked quizzical, shrugged, then smiled.

“I guess we won’t kill each other.”

The President snorted.

“I hope not. Keep working. I’ll be back here by six.”

In the great banquet hall of the State Department the atmosphere was quivering, as he had known it would be. No one dared mention the funeral, everyone expected him to. He took a cold satisfaction from mentioning it not at all. Presidents, kings and prime ministers, most of whom vehemently opposed his actions in Gorotoland, Panama and the UN, many of whom almost certainly relished his discomfiture and that of his country this day, came down the line and shook his hand. He wrapped himself in the formidable dignity of Mr. Speaker, greeted them with exactly the right amount of smile, stared at them with a courteous but inscrutable impassivity, and said nothing of any import whatsoever. “The Caretaker President” became “The Great Stone Face” in the next editions. “A somber and unyielding President Abbott today greeted visiting foreign dignitaries following the riot-besmirched funeral of President Hudson,” the first news stories began. Not even the new President of the Sixth (People’s) French Republic was able to elicit more than a calm stare when he made some slyly condescending reference to “the difficulties we all face in this difficult world.” “Do we?” the President asked, and turned away to greet the next in line.

At no point did he make a comment that might remotely be construed as bearing upon either United States involvements overseas or the dreadful events of the day. By the time he left the reception, shortly before six, he had successfully established an aura of mystery in the minds of his drinking, gossiping, hors d’oeuvres-gulping guests. Orrin’s absence nicely compounded it.
What are they up to?
was the general burden of the noisy crowd of famous global leaders upon whom he looked back for a moment with the briefest but most explicit expression of contempt as he departed. The expression of course was noted too. A genuine uneasiness followed his departure. This was, after all, the President of the United States. They did not like to have him acting like a cold and implacable man. It disturbed them, which was what he wanted it to do.

Promptly at six p.m. the press secretary called in the reporters hanging about in the lobby and announced that the President would go on the air at nine. At that point Orrin and Bob Leffingwell had the first draft finished. The President told them to order some drinks and dinner for themselves in the study, took the scribbled-over, crossed-out, written-in pages into his bedroom, propped himself up comfortably on some pillows and began to read and edit. By seven he had it shaped up about the way he wanted it and took it back out to Orrin and Bob, who were, he was pleased to see, in quietly amicable conversation. He called in a secretary, dictated his revised version to the accompaniment of their last-minute suggestions; read it slowly through once again aloud, making a few final corrections in his round, firm hand; sent it down to be typed for delivery. This brought him up to eight-fifteen.

He decided he needed half an hour’s rest, decided also that a sudden change of plan would be good for his critics’ psychological equilibrium. He told the press secretary to notify the networks that he would speak at nine-thirty instead of nine, which caused great outcries and anguish (“He can’t
do
that!” NBC wailed to the press secretary. “He can’t?” the secretary said. “Know anybody who can stop him?”). It also made the world even more uneasy about his intentions, which, he thought with a sardonic amusement, was a good thing. He lay down for thirty minutes of instant, deep sleep; was wakened by his valet promptly at nine, got up, washed, put on the freshly pressed suit laid out for him, and by nine-twenty was downstairs in the television room ready to go. The Great Seal appeared on the screens at nine-thirty exactly, a hushed voice uttered the standard, “Ladies and gentlemen, from the White House in Washington, D.C., we bring you the President of the United States,” and he was on. He felt grave and looked grave. He also felt powerful and looked powerful. He was in no mood to equivocate.

“My countrymen,” he said, looking straight into the cameras, “my first word to you is this: your country is still here. She is going to remain here. Under my administration she is going to do what is best and right for her to do. Neither foreign critics nor domestic guttersnipes are going to deflect her one inch.

“To those who desecrated this sad day, and to those who either by deed or thought supported them, I say: you have met your match. I am sending to Congress tomorrow a message outlining a stringent anti-riot law which will give the Federal Government extensive and necessary powers to protect itself against anarchy—and protect the honest citizen in the honest exercise of his right of dissent
as long as that dissent is peaceable, law-abiding and within the customary norms of decent social behavior.

“While I hold this office, we will never again tolerate the sort of thing that has gone on in this country too much in recent years. We will never again tolerate the vicious, insane anarchism which has as its sole purpose, not honorable protest, but the deliberate destruction of American government and American society—the deliberate destruction of America herself.”

(He stopped to take a sip of water, and in his apartment in Tiber Towers near the Capitol, Fred Van Ackerman turned to Rufus Kleinfert and said smugly, “He’ll have a hell of a fight on that one. Listen to the damned liberals yelp!”)

“To those honest critics of American foreign policy,” the President resumed, “whose reasonable right to protest has been kidnapped by the rioters, the racists”—he paused and gave the next words full impact—“and the rats, I say to you that your government welcomes honest criticism. But I believe, as did the great President we buried today, that you are mistaken and that the present international situation requires us to do the things we are doing.

“Let me spell them out once more, for you and for all those overseas who honestly”—and again he paused and gave his words an uncompromising emphasis—“or dishonestly—oppose what we are doing in Gorotoland and Panama.

“There was a challenge to us, and to human decencies, in Gorotoland. President Hudson warned those responsible. They did not listen. Forty-four American missionaries were raped, murdered, mutilated. American property was wantonly destroyed. A Communist-trained, Communist-financed and Communist-led attempt was made to overturn the legitimate government of Gorotoland.