Promise of Joy (34 page)

1

“Hi,” said the voice he had never thought to hear again. “You’re a hell of a hard man to get through to, I must say.”

“It’s a little busy around here,” he responded, half laughing, half crying, with relief. “Where are you? Are you both all right?”

“We’re at the East Gate,” his son said. “We’re both all right.” He hesitated and his excited tone turned grave. “It hasn’t been easy, but we’re both all right.”

“Thank God for that,” he said simply. “Get in here as fast as you can.”

“On our way,” Hal said.

While he waited for them to walk down the drive, into the West Wing and along the chaotic, crisis-humming corridors to the Oval Office—one of the longest three-minute spans he had ever experienced—the gamble he had taken with their lives suddenly assumed such an enormity in his mind that he felt he could hardly breathe. It had been a desperate gamble, a terrifyingly honest gamble, a gamble he had sincerely believed to be his only recourse. At the time, under the remorseless pressures that then existed, it had seemed the only thing he could do. Now, as always with desperate solutions when pressures are suddenly removed, it appeared utterly unreal, unnecessary and monstrous.

So it appeared to him who had done it. How must it appear to those who had been its potential, its almost certain, victims? How would his children regard him now, who had just yesterday forced himself to sentence them, in effect, to death?

The agonized uncertainty must have been in his face when the door opened, for they paused on the threshold, as he paused behind the desk, and for a tense, unreal moment they looked at one another like strangers. Then Crystal gave a little cry and rushed forward into his arms, Hal followed, and they all found themselves laughing, crying and hugging one another at the same time.

He needn’t have worried: they understood. A dreadful weight lifted suddenly from his heart.

“Well,” he said shakily, “sit down and let me look at you.”

“Shouldn’t we—?” Crystal began. “I mean, can you—aren’t you too busy to waste time on us right now?”

“Good God,” he said.
“Waste
time on you?” A sudden twinkle came into his eyes. “What else is there to waste time on?”

“Now
that”
Hal said with mock severity, “is being downright disingenuous.”

“Yes,” he agreed; a little silence fell; and they studied one another again, not this time with tension or strangeness, but as three who had passed through the fire together.

“How did they treat you?” he asked finally. “Aside from—aside from—”

“It wasn’t pleasant,” Hal said gravely, and for the first time he brought his bandaged left hand, which he had been half concealing at his side, into full view and rested it carefully on his knee. “And Crystal lost a little hair. But on the whole”—his eyes looked far away, remembering—“it wasn’t bad. And,” he added in the words his father still needed to hear, “we knew you had no choice. And we believed in what you were doing. So that made it a little easier to face what—what we thought we might have to face. Other than that, though,” his tone became more conversational, and less tense, “it wasn’t too bad. They fed us reasonably well and kept us isolated or blindfolded all the time. We never saw them, but I would say there were about five, wouldn’t you, Crys?”

“Yes,” she said. “A white man and a white woman, two black men and a black woman. About our age, we thought, most of them well educated and cultured and very hep on the world—as they see it. Which isn’t”—she smiled wryly—“quite the way we see it.”

“How did they let you go?” he asked. “Did you see them? The FBI will want to get all this right away, of course.”

“They turned us out in Rock Creek Park about half an hour ago,” Hal said. “Fortunately we found a cab right away. We promised them we wouldn’t talk to the FBI.” His expression turned as wry as his wife’s. “You’ve no idea what good friends we parted when it suddenly became clear that we were all on the same side after all, trying to settle this hellish mess in Asia. But for once,” he said, and his face became grim, “a Knox is deliberately going to break his word. We’ll tell the FBI everything we can possibly remember about the scum and I hope they find them and shoot them down ‘while trying to escape.’”

“They won’t do that,” Crystal said, “because now everything’s changed and we
are
all on the same side. Our little episode will be lost, forgiven and forgotten in the rush of things. It will be a long time before anybody will start thinking about it again. And then it won’t matter.”

The President nodded.

“Very true and very shrewd. A great wave of let-bygones-be-bygones is sweeping over the world today. But tell the FBI anyway. There may come a time when the balance returns. When it does”—his expression for a moment turned as grim as his son’s—“I too will be in favor of rather severe exactions.… I want you to know,” he added quietly, “that I’m so grateful to have you back that I—that I”—his eyes filled again with tears, but he went on—“that I can’t really express it.”

“You ain’t the only one, Pop,” Hal said with a deliberately cheerful flipness that set them all laughing together, albeit a little shakily.

“No,” his father agreed, blowing his nose. “Why do you suppose they really let you go?”

“No point in holding us any more, is there?” his son inquired with a touch of Knox tartness. “Who wants to do anything to bother
you?
You’re the world’s great hero now, aren’t you?”

And so he seemed to be, he reflected after they left to go back to the Mansion to talk to the FBI and then get some much-needed sleep … so he seemed to be. Orrin Knox the world’s villain was suddenly Orrin Knox the world’s savior. Of all the great ironies of history, he thought, surely this must be one of the most exquisite.

He looked at the reports, maps, papers strewn everywhere across the enormous desk and gave way for a moment to a helpless laughter—so overwhelming were the things that confronted him. But, like his children’s when they left him, it was a relieved and almost happy laughter, for at least now he had options once more. Now he was in charge of things again. Through him the world had one last chance to save itself. Once again Orrin Knox was the master of events, not their plaything.

And the greatest irony of all was something that had occurred to him instantly, though in the terrible crisis that confronted mankind it might not occur to most others until very much later on, if then.

He was saved by the bell—not by any effort of the American President, not by any recognition by the world of America’s decent purposes, not by any triumph of American principles or American courage or American strength, or his own principles or his own courage or his own strength—but simply because two ravenous beasts of history’s jungle had, for reasons known only to them and already, he suspected, forgotten in their joint terror at the awful results of their mutual hatreds, turned on one another.

He could not claim that America had brought sanity back to the world: the endless patient efforts of succeeding Administrations had not accomplished what a single rifle shot in Gorotoland had done. He could not claim that Orrin Knox’s genius or patience or integrity or human worth or diplomacy had contributed anything to bringing the world back to its senses: some unknown soldier’s blind instinctive reaction to an enemy he had been taught for years to hate had done more than Orrin Knox, for all his piety and wit, could ever do.

Nor was there any endorsement of Orrin Knox’s policies, any vindication of the beliefs and principles for which he had stood all his life. He had always argued for firmness and unwavering strength in the face of Communist imperialism. So, he had held out for firmness and unwavering strength, and what had it got him? It had been on the very verge of getting him complete disaster, when a sheer fluke of fate had saved him from it.

If anything, he could thank, not himself, but the insane antagonisms, suspicions and mutual jealousies of the leaders of the two Communist giants who for years had trained their citizens to hate one another. Now history with its terrible impartial justice had permitted those leaders to achieve their purpose; and like all who were permitted to achieve a purpose so obscene, history had handed them with it the bones of ruin and the skull of death.

And so they were turning to him—not because firmness and strength and courage and integrity had been rewarded—but simply because slavery and deceit and terror and imperial ambition had been rewarded, with an impartial and devastating irony, even as they were being shown to be futile, empty, pointless and bad.

Irony piled upon irony. His way, perhaps, had not been right, for often enough in history it had led straight to disaster. Appeasement had not been right either, for often enough in history it too had led straight to disaster.

So where was the middle ground, and what was the answer?

There was no time left for mankind to find out now. And that, perhaps, was the most savagely delicious irony of them all.

At any rate, he had people to see and things to do; and now, in these first hectic moments after he had received the formal appeals from Peking and Moscow, he decided he had no time for philosophy, only for action. He made his first decision, called his press secretary. Within twenty minutes a distraught and nervous press corps, as terrified and fearful of what might happen as the rest of humanity, was crowding into the East Room.

He entered, they rose with an instant and unquestioning respect they had never before, he noted with a grim inward humor, shown to Orrin Knox.

The press secretary said: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

He said: “Please be seated.”

And subjected them to a slow, searching examination: these hostile faces and bitter tongues that had tried so often to trip and trap him in the past.

There was none of that now. Just fear and supplication, the arrogant and the vindictive humbled at last.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said—adding, directly into the cameras—“my fellow countrymen: Less than twenty-four hours ago, as you know, the armed forces of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China clashed in Gorotoland. Immediately thereafter the two countries were at war all along their Asian border. Within a matter of hours they had exchanged atomic attacks with great and as yet unknown loss of life, and had inflicted upon one another devastating destruction of a number of cities. They had also loosed a radioactive cloud which is even now as I speak drifting into the Pacific Basin toward Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the South Pacific.

“The atomic exchange and the general fighting then ceased. Each country served an ultimatum upon the other. The ultimatums expired at midnight last night, and nothing happened, because by that time, I suspect, both sides were finally aghast at the dreadful things they had done. Some last shred of sanity apparently revived in both Moscow and Peking. This morning, as you all know, they have turned to the President of the United States to mediate their dispute.

“I must now decide whether or not to do so.”

“My God, Mr. President,” the
Post
blurted in a tone both astounded and fearful, “surely you don’t have any doubt?”

“Well,” he said reasonably, “why shouldn’t I? Two days ago you people regarded me as the world’s most hateful and irresponsible man. The same opinion was firmly held and loudly voiced in many places throughout the world, most notably in Moscow and Peking. Perhaps I am not worthy of so great a responsibility. Many of you have frequently told me so, at any rate.” His gaze, which had been wandering thoughtfully over a good many faces that flushed and eyes that dropped as he spoke, came back to concentrate on the
Post,
pale and standing as if mesmerized at his chair. “Isn’t that true?”

“Sir—” the
Post
began. “Mr. President—”

“Isn’t it true that I am the world’s most worthless and reckless man?” he demanded sharply, giving no quarter now to those who had never given any to him. “Isn’t it true that such a worthless individual has no right to intervene in the affairs of the world which are so much better managed by the great minds of Moscow and Peking? Nine-tenths of you in this room have told this to your country and the world—and have believed it as much, I daresay, as you believe anything—as far back as I can remember. You have been particularly harsh in the two weeks since I entered this office. I repeat, where do you find in me the characteristics that make me worthy of this great responsibility now?”

And he resumed his bland, patient, implacable searching from face to face.

For several long moments no one said anything. The
Post
sat slowly down again. The
Times
started to rise, thought better of it. Frankly Unctuous and the networks were similarly dumb. At last in the front row a familiar figure stood up, short, rather dumpy, determined, grim—for once not sure of himself, for once not pompous and all-knowing—but at least, thank God, the President noted with an inward satisfaction and a considerable respect, having the guts and the simple character to do it.

His tone, however, did not yield an inch as he inquired coldly:

“Yes?”

“Mr. President,” Walter Dobius said carefully and with obvious strain. “It may be that when the history of our times is written—
if
it is written—it will be found that you were right and we were wrong in our differing positions on foreign policy. Apparently—for the time being, anyway”—and it was obvious that the words came hard and that he wasn’t yielding entirely, though honest enough to yield a good deal—“it appears that you were right.

“Therefore,” he said firmly, looking around him at his colleagues with a defiant but determined air, “I for one am ready to apologize for some of the harsher and perhaps more—unrestrained—things that I have said about you in my column. I would suggest to my colleagues, and respectfully to you, Mr. President, that this is no time on either side to harbor grudges. We are all in this together. And frankly”—and the pompous delivery relaxed abruptly into perhaps the most human tone the President had ever heard him use—“it certainly is one hell of a mess, isn’t it?”