Promise of Joy (36 page)

“You’re the boss,” he said, the words not coming easy, but there was no alternative. “Whatever you say.”

“And you, Jawbone?” he inquired sharply. The Speaker, who had been staring out at the snowy world, jumped as though he had been shot.

“Well, now, Mr. President, sir,” he began, “well, now—”

“Have you been listening to what I’ve been saying?” he demanded with a sudden sharp impatience.

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Jawbone said. “I surely have, now, I surely—”

“Then your committees will start work at once, even if they have to sit all night, and that appropriation will be on the floor tomorrow noon,” he said in an even voice.

“Yes, sir,” the Speaker said with an abruptly reviving cheerfulness. “Yes,
sir,
Mr. President, we’ll do it. We’ll
do it!”

“Good,” he said dryly. “I knew I could count on you, Jawbone.”

He turned to the ex-President.

“Bill, I want you and Bob to do everything you can to help them, of course. I think that for the duration of the crisis I’m going to form what I think I’ll call ‘the Council of National Unity’—you four, the Vice President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, Ceil Jason, the Minority Leaders of House and Senate, probably the Chief Justice, and maybe”—he paused and smiled a little—“just because he would be so pleased to be in on it, and so chagrined if he weren’t—maybe that distinguished jurist, Mr. Associate Justice Thomas Buckmaster Davis.”

“Tommy?” Bill Abbott inquired with a smile. “You’ll never get him to stop talking long enough to get anything done.”

“Oh, yes, I will,” the President said comfortably. “I know Tommy.”

“So do we all,” Bob Munson said, though not critically, for everybody was fond of Tommy, for all his fussbudgety ways. “What are we supposed to be, a sort of regency while you go abroad? You
are
going abroad, you say: you aren’t going to ask them to come here?”

“No, I think not,” he said thoughtfully. “That might make them almost too much the supplicants.”

“Which of course they are,” Senator Munson remarked, “so why be gentle with them? They got themselves and the world into this hell-fire mess, so why shouldn’t they come to you? They’d damned well make you come to them if the situation were reversed.”

“Well, it isn’t,” he said shortly, “and I just happen to feel it’s best, Bob, that’s all. We’ve got to maintain some of their dignity, on both sides, or they may start fighting again. And then the world would really be lost. I tell you,” he added, and his voice became somber, “we’re right up against it in a way you fellows may not realize, yet. There’s no room for any slippage. They’re terrified and exhausted right now, but give them a week or two to recover and who knows that they won’t go insane again?”

“Surely they won’t resume fighting
now,”
Arly Richardson said, “after atomic war—after all the destruction—after bringing the world right to the edge of nowhere. That
would
be insane!”

“Arly,” the President said patiently, “it is my observation after a long period in public life that men in general
are
insane. They do something and get scared as hell, and for a brief time they act sensibly. Then the pressure eases and they begin to feel their oats again, and pretty soon they’re insane again. Now, sanity dictates that neither Russia nor China nor us nor anybody will ever again use atomic weapons or do what has just been done. But just wait a few days: they’ll be back snarling at each other, and then next they’ll be finding pretexts, and before we know it there’ll be some more big booms, and next time we’ll probably be dragged in, and that will truly be the end of Earth. So I have a very limited time in which to move: ten days
at the most,
I would say. I’m planning to leave for Moscow tomorrow night as soon as you’ve finished work on the Hill.
If—”
He paused and again his expression became somber. “If, that is, they accept my conditions.”

“Which are tough,” William Abbott observed. “But—”

“It’s a damned tough world right now, Bill,” he said gravely. “I’ve got to be tough. It’s probably the first and last chance anybody is ever going to have in this world to be that tough about the things that really matter to world peace. I’ve got to, because the opportunity, I think we can safely say, is never going to come again.”

“Which doesn’t mean that they will have sense enough to see that,” Senator Munson remarked.

“No,” he agreed quietly. “But we should be getting some indication pretty soon.”

“I guess we’ll just have to pray, as you said, Mr. President, sir,” Jawbone remarked brightly. “I guess we’ll just have to pray, now, and hope for the best.”

“I guess we will, Jawbone,” he agreed. “Meanwhile, you all go back to the Hill and do your damnedest for me, will you?”

Senator Richardson gave him a quick, sardonic look as they stood up to go. But his glance was not as hostile as it used to be.

“I don’t think we have any choice, do you?” he inquired; and, surprisingly, held out his hand in a manner that was almost cordial.

“I don’t think you do, Arly,” the President agreed, shaking it gratefully, “but I really appreciate your cooperation.”

“You have it,” the Majority Leader said. And added somberly, “To what end, God alone can tell.”

“He’d better help us!” the Speaker exclaimed in a tone that admonished the Almighty. “He better had, now!”

“You tell Him, Jawbone,” Bill Abbott said. “He’ll listen to you.”

But whether He really would, the President had no way of knowing as the day wore on with no word from Moscow or Peking. Hysterical news reports, headlines and broadcasts continued to come out of both countries, filtered through censorship and cataclysm but providing overall a graphic picture of atomic devastation, vast and growing popular unrest, desperate governments trying to maintain control in the midst of the chaos their deliberate policies had created. Under any other circumstances he would have rejoiced to see them destroy one another like two scorpions in a bottle; but the sheer size of the conflict, and its atomic corollary, made it impossible to take so objective and detached a view. The argument had to be settled before any more millions died, any more cities were destroyed, any more atomic poisons were loosed in the atmosphere to imperil the world. He had made his conditions tough, but it was time to be tough. Heads had to be knocked together on a global scale for the sake of humanity, and this, as he had truly said, was very likely the first and last chance history would ever provide for anyone, President or whatever, to do it.

At noon he received his first encouragement: Turkey and Egypt announced, in simultaneous messages to him and to the Secretary-General, their unconditional acceptance of his plan to internationalize the Dardanelles and the Suez Canal under commissions to be composed of six members each, three to be named by the United Nations and three by the controlling power.

Simultaneously the Secretary-General announced the formation of an International Relief Commission to provide relief for the victims of the atomic exchange in Russia and China, and in the South Pacific if necessary. He added that he was pleased to announce that fifty-three nations had already signified their intention to contribute “very substantial sums, extensive medical supplies and a large number of trained medical and relief personnel” to the effort.

In addition, a proviso the President regarded as much more important than the internationalization of the waterways, the S.-G. announced the formation of a United Nations peace-keeping force to patrol the Sino-Soviet border and again was able to report, with great pleasure and obvious encouragement, that already forty-six countries had signified their intention to contribute “troops, matériel and necessary supporting funds” to the force. Fear, shock and horror, for the moment at least, were doing wonderful things to the world.

Through the press secretary the President issued a statement that he was “highly gratified and greatly encouraged by the overwhelming response of the nations to the desperate need for cooperation and stability.”

And it genuinely did please him, and it was apparent from media response, from the hundreds of thousands of wires, cables and phone calls that were coming in, and from the reaction of everyone he saw in the course of the day, that a genuine wave of good feeling, unity and even self-congratulation was sweeping the world. Men
could
cooperate, they
could
work together, they
could
bury their differences and strive in harmony for stability and peace—for a moment or two—and if they were scared enough.

The moment
was
here and they
were
scared enough. Out of these two facts he had to fashion, in desperate haste and with all the leverage events had placed so unexpectedly in his hands, something that would prove of lasting value when the moment had gone, when fear had eased and when all the petty jealousies, suspicions, self-interests and cupidities were free to roam the globe again.

The imperative need to do this was brought home to him poignantly once again—he did not really require the reminder, but perhaps it was good to have it—when he received a frantic call in mid-afternoon from the President of Indonesia and the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand, linked to him via satellite and Picture-phone. All were close to tears as they reported that rioting and looting had broken out in their countries and that in consequence they had imposed martial law. But they confessed that they were not too hopeful that they could maintain order in the face of the wave of terror that was sweeping the Antipodes and the South Pacific as the atomic cloud moved slowly south.

All besought his help, but there was not really too much that he could do. He had ordered weather planes aloft from Hawaii and American Samoa and their reports were going simultaneously and without censorship to Jakarta, Canberra and Wellington, and to Pago Pago for broadcast to all the islands of the South Pacific. There was some indication that the cloud was rising slowly into the stratosphere and beginning to dissipate in the face of strong winds, but its ultimate fate was as yet unknown. He promised as much aid as the United States and the UN could possibly deliver if the necessity should arise, and urged them to be of good cheer and good faith. He commiserated with them as sympathetically as he knew how. Beyond that he was helpless and they knew it.

The monstrous fruit of the Soviet-Sino exchange would either reach another deadly flowering or it would not, depending entirely upon the whim of nature and the sorely tried compassion of the Lord.

Meanwhile, the day moved on. On the Hill, Arly and Jawbone opened the sessions with grave speeches to hushed chambers, urging support of the President. A long string of fervently agreeing speeches followed in both houses. The Appropriations and Armed Services committees went to work at once, issuing firm pledges to have the Defense Department bill ready by noon tomorrow. In the Senate the committees that had jurisdiction reported at once on the Cabinet nominees they had been stalling for almost two weeks: by 3 p.m. that same day all were approved.

There was a little questioning as to why the President had chosen the forum of a press conference instead of a speech to Congress in which to assess the situation and announce his “Ten Demands,” but this was successfully, if ominously, satisfied by William Abbott.

“I believe his reasoning was,” he said slowly to the intently listening House, “that at this stage of it, it was best to keep it on a direct but relatively informal basis. I would expect that within the next few days, or possibly even hours, he will come here and talk to us, if one of two things happens: if the situation greatly improves … or”—and his voice took on a somber note that sent chills through all who heard him—“if it gets worse.…”

At nightfall there was still no indication from either Moscow or Peking as to which it might be. He could imagine the frantic arguing and debating and pulling and hauling that must be going on in both capitals, and thought grimly: you asked for it, you bastards, now
suffer.
But presently, as the hour neared 6 p.m., he decided it was time to put in a prod.

Once again he called in the press corps, now grown to nearly a thousand from all over the country and all over the world. The East Room was so full of reporters, cameras, lights and confusion that the ushers abandoned any attempt to maintain seating space, folded up the collapsible chairs and cleared the room of them. He took notice of this when he reached the podium, grave-faced and unsmiling, to face an equally grave and unsmiling press corps.

“I’m sorry we can’t seat you, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “but there are so many of you now that I’m afraid it’s going to be S.R.O. from now on.…

“
I
told you,” he continued, and his tone became grave, “that I would keep you advised of developments as soon as they come.

“I must report to you that so far there have been none—aside, of course, from the magnificent responses of Turkey, Egypt and many, many other nations of good will and good heart, in the areas outside the control of Moscow and Peking.

“From those two capitals, however, I have received no message and no response.

“I cannot conceive that the men in control there—if, indeed,” he added quietly, “they are still in control there, which we don’t know at the moment—are so insane that they are contemplating further hostilities. Possibly they are contemplating direct negotiations, in which case, more power to them. I have no pride of authorship, and if they can achieve a settlement without me, then by all means let them go to it.

“But if they are not contemplating direct negotiations, and if they still want me to arbitrate, then they had better speedily reach a decision to that effect and let me get started. Because the situation is still dreadfully desperate, and the longer they wait, the more chance there is that it will once more tip over into war. And that, I think, would be too awful to even think about.

“So if they want me, I’m here. But”—his tone became as hard and unyielding as he thought the situation demanded—“I am not going to wait forever. I’m going to give them just so much time to make up their minds—and don’t anybody make any mistake that it’s going to be very long, because it isn’t—and then if they don’t want me, I’m going to get out of it.