A Thing of State, page 37
What it might do to the reputation and standing of the United States, and to its influence in the world, he glimpsed briefly but did not dwell upon. In the manner of his immediate predecessors, his own political advantage was, at this point, paramount. He was confident he could sell his solution to the country, and that was what mattered now.
He thought for a moment, picked up the telephone. The White House switchboard, its operators prided themselves, never slept; nor did they ever fail to track down anyone the President wanted, however exalted the person, late the hour, or remote the geography. In this case there were no problems. They had all just returned to their homes from a lively mariachi-band party at Dolly’s in honor of the new Mexican ambassador. As with their call from Greater Lolómé, they accepted this one with alacrity.
“I know it’s terribly late,” the President admitted with becoming contrition (it was about eleven-fifteen), “but I would like your advice.”
“Nonsense!” James Van Rensselaer Burden said stoutly, putting his studs back in. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Delighted!”
“I’m a night owl,” Able Montague said cheerfully, abruptly wide awake although he had really been about to collapse from the sheer social fatigue of six black-tie dinners in seven days. “Count me in.”
“I’ll be up for hours yet,” Sally Holliwell informed him, hastily resurrecting the evening gown she had just tossed in the hamper to go to the cleaners. “I’ll walk across the river and be there in no time.”
The President uttered a delighted little laugh.
“I’ll bet you could, at that,” he said. “I’ll bet you could…!”
“Now,” he said after they had all arrived inconspicuously by cab at the east entrance and been whisked swiftly up to the Lincoln Study through the silent mansion, “what will anybody have?” He swung open the doors of a handsome antique rosewood liquor cabinet and gestured at its sparkling array. “I’ve also ordered coffee from the kitchen, which will be along in a minute.”
“Nada,” Sally said.
“Coffee, please,” requested Able and Jimmy Van.
“Oh, come on,” he chided humorously. “Surely you’re game for at least one mild little nightcap.”
“We’ve been to Dolly’s and are plumb liquored-out,” Sally explained. “However, a very light crème de menthe and soda.”
“That sounds good,” Able said.
“Likewise,” said Jimmy Van.
“Now,” the President said after he had served them and himself with a concoction he secretly considered rather insipid and hardly worthy of a hard-drinking town, “I saw your famous TV show with old Seedy, of course, and I’ve read your various comments since, but I want to get a real, absolute, inside fix on him before I proceed with what I want to do.”
He could sense three pairs of reportorial ears pricking up, and reflected with some amusement that it was very easy to manipulate members of the Washington media if you just expended a little thought and care on it. They lived at the seat of power, were often on a first-name basis with its principal players, and yet when you came right down to it, the allure of Really Being in the Know was the greatest carrot anybody could dangle in front of them. All their ostentatious little skepticisms and self-protective barriers toppled at that ultimate flattery. He could never understand why some Presidents had difficulty with the press. All you had to do was take a leaf from the Kennedy book: be sure at regular intervals to scratch their heads and pat their tummies, and they’d lie down and roll over for you anytime.
“What are you planning to do, Mr. President?” Jimmy Van inquired cautiously.
“I asked you first,” he said with a grin that was intimate and flattering. “However, if you insist. How do you think Sidi would react if I”—and he proceeded to outline in the most sketchy terms, just enough to send them out tomorrow morning trumpeting it to the world, what he had in mind.
When he finished, there was a long and increasingly uncomfortable silence. Perhaps his inspiration of inviting them at this unusual hour in the hope his dramatic confidence would win their support was not going to be so successful after all. He decided to plunge right into it, having discovered long ago that this was the best tactic in moments of public uncertainty.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded with a carefully calculated hint of asperity. “Don’t you like it?”
“Unto the just shall be their just rewards,” Jimmy Van murmured.
“But, golly,” Sally remarked tartly, “reward this one? Are you sure that’s what you want to do, Mr. President?”
“I’m not rewarding him,” the President protested, beginning to be genuinely annoyed now; perhaps this really had been a mistake, although surely he could make them see it his way. They had all been generally supportive in their treatment of him, if a bit restive in their private comments, which had been carried back to him from Washington’s endless gossip mill. “I’m trying to give him a reasonable out that will permit him to retreat gracefully from the confrontation he has forced upon me in these recent weeks.”
At this they all looked a little blank. Able could not resist a gentle murmur: “He has forced upon you?”
“Certainly,” the President said sharply. “Have I been the one threatening Lesser Lolómé? Have I waved atom bombs in his face and heaped scorn upon him? Let’s get your priorities straight, please, and your memories as well. Where have you been in the past couple of months?”
“Watching,” Able said.
“With a mixture of awe and apprehension,” Sally said.
“And a decreasing measure of hope,” Jimmy Van suggested.
“Definitely decreasing,” Sally agreed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “I—will—be—damned.” He decided to play the humor card, which often worked when things became solemn. His tone became much lighter. “I’m starting to get us out of this. That ought to have you all jumping up and down with glee. You ought to be doing cartwheels on the south lawn, Sally. Accompanied by you, Able, and you, too, Jimmy. If you two spavined old warhorses aren’t too tired to prance.”
At the mental picture this evoked they all laughed. Tension diminished.
“Seriously,” he said, “I did want your advice on this. And I was hoping you’d help ease the way with your colleagues and the country. There’ll be an NSC meeting early tomorrow morning; you can play this as a leak from that, if you like. Or maybe it could be something you heard at Dolly’s, one hears everything at Dolly’s. But spread the word. It will help get things rolling, help create the public mood I want. Build some programs around it, you two; write us a sermon in your column, Jimmy.”
“Fly a trial balloon for you,” Sally said dryly, “so you can yank it back if it doesn’t fly?”
“It will fly,” he said with a sudden grimness. “I’m committed to it. It will fly.”
“What if the NSC doesn’t—” Able began.
“It will fly,” he repeated. “Do you really have any doubt?”
“It’s desperation time,” Able said thoughtfully. “You do need something. Maybe this will be it. After all, as Lyndon used to say, ‘you’re the only President we’ve got.’”
“Good,” he said with a chuckle, confidence resurging. “Remember that. And thanks for coming by at this ungodly hour.”
“It was worth the price of admission,” Sally said.
“Every bit,” said Jimmy Van.
And off they went, not, of course, committing themselves to him one way or the other on what they would do with the information. Downstairs at the east entrance, waiting for their cabs, they were more candid with one another.
“What do you make of that?” Able inquired.
“Complete surrender, I call it,” Sally said.
“That’s what you call it,” Jimmy Van said wryly, “but wait until he gets through selling it to the country.”
“He won’t have to sell it much,” Able said. “He knows his constituency. When did Americans ever want to really disturb themselves over something that far away and that inconsequential?”
“Inconsequential?” Sally demanded as the first cab pulled up under the portico and they moved to help her into it. “A-bombs? An international wild card like Sidi?”
“That’s the way they regard it,” Able said.
“Wait and see,” Jimmy agreed bleakly. “Able’s absolutely right. Americans won’t care until the bombs come here someday and then it will be too late.”
“Write us a sermon as he suggested, Jimmy,” Sally said as she got in and prepared to close the door. “Maybe it will save the day.”
“I’ll write it out,” Jimmy said grimly, “but it will take more than that to wipe out the long-range consequences of this little episode.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Sally said. “I think the three of us ought to do a program together about it.”
“I come first,” Able pointed out with amicable insistence. “I’m on Saturday, you’re on Sunday. Why don’t you two join me?”
Sally rolled down the window as her cab started to pull away.
“For once,” she called out, “I’ll yield. I think it’s that important.”
“So do I,” Jimmy Van called back.
“And I,” Able sang out as two more cabs rolled up. “I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow.”
Upstairs, the President returned to his room along the deserted corridor, its utter silence almost physically haunted by the ghosts of so many strong characters, so many great events.
He had some inner doubts about the course he proposed to follow, and he knew Helen would have some, too, but he honestly did not feel that he was betraying the past or failing to live up to the heritage of his office.
Sometimes things had to be done. It was all in how you sold them to the country. On many occasions, he felt, history was what the President said it was. He intended that the history of this eventful moment should blend seamlessly into the pattern of what had gone before.
He intended it should show him as he pictured himself, a leader wise and courageous and ever conscious of his high responsibilities to his troubled, uncertain land.
2
When the Secretary of State met with his inner group of advisers, “the usual suspects,” later that day, he told them the National Security Council meeting had been one of the most extraordinary—and disheartening—he had ever attended. This judgment was endorsed by the Deputy Secretary, who said she had never participated in an event since entering the Foreign Service forty years ago that had so dismayed and disillusioned her.
“Lordy,” Basil Rifkin said, starting to be humorous but realizing instantly that this was not what was called for on this occasion, “it really must have been something, the way you two are reacting.”
“Very strongly,” Hugo Mallerbie observed.
“Better tell us,” Joan Cohn-Bourassa said, “if State’s going to be involved. And I suppose it is.”
“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” asked Gage McGregor with his ineffable giggle.
“That’s right,” Ray Stanley said soberly. “State will be involved.”
“As long as—” Eulie Montgomery began, then stopped. They all looked at her blankly.
“You’re being a mystery woman, Eulie,” Joan Bourassa remarked. “Tell us, tell us! We can’t stand the suspense.”
“It isn’t funny,” Eulie said, as soberly as Ray. “It’s really very discouraging.”
“Contrary to everything we’ve always believed and done our best to exemplify in this department,” the Secretary agreed.
“Good heavens,” Joanie said, “out with it!”
It had begun, the Secretary related, with their arrival at eight AM, as requested, in the Roosevelt Room. Juice, sweet rolls, and coffee on the house were already in place. So also, much to their surprise, was the First Lady, whom they all greeted, with respect, as “Helen,” which had been her expressed desire to the top officials of the government from her first day in the White House.
“His Nibs will be here shortly,” she said with a smile. “He almost overslept. It must have been the sleep of the just.”
“It couldn’t have been anything else,” the Vice President agreed with a certain nervous eagerness which she accepted with a comfortable laugh that put him at ease.
“Of course, Hank,” she said in a kindly tone. “What else?”
“There you are,” the President said, coming in the door with his characteristic confident stride. “And there you are,” he said to his wife, bending to kiss her cheek as he passed her on his way to the head of the table. “You changed your mind.”
“I got curious,” she said with the sort of relaxed good humor he knew from experience indicated an extra attention he should be wary of. “I thought maybe you might need to be kept in line.”
And she looked around the table with an amusement in which they were invited to join. Very cheery, the Secretary of State thought, alert, as they all were, to these little presidential undercurrents.
“Hah!” the President said. “I guess that tells me. Well, gang”—he looked around the table at Ray and Eulie from State; Secretary Arlie McGregor and chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Bill Rathbun from Defense; Eldridge Barnes, director of the CIA; the Vice President—“I think we’re about to approach a turning point in our dealings with little Mr. Sidi.”
“Is he going to let us get off the hook, Mr. President?” Eldridge Barnes inquired, startling them all with his audacity, but then, El was an officially recognized character and allowed his accepted range of outrageousness. No one else would have dared such a remark, except possibly the First Lady.
For just a second it appeared that the President, this time, would not be amused by El’s sanctioned audacities. But he laughed, quite comfortably, and gave as good as he got.
“I see the joker’s on the job,” he remarked with a chuckle, “early in the morning though it may be. No, he’s not going to let us off the hook, El. Nor are we going to let him off the hook. It’s going to be a mutual business.”
“Mr. President,” Arlie McGregor inquired in a frankly puzzled tone, “what does that mean?”
“It means,” the President said firmly, “that we are working very hard on a compromise for which I would appreciate the endorsement of the National Security Council.”
“As long as it doesn’t involve the commitment of American troops,” Arlie McGregor said solemnly, as though he had a choice.
“We could do it,” Gen. Rathbun agreed, “but only as a last resort.”
“Don’t you people keep up with the news?” the President demanded with some exasperation. “How many times in the past two months have I said that I would not, repeat not, use force in this matter?”
“We have always assumed that it was there as a last-resort option,” Bill Rathbun said.
“At Defense we always have to assume that it is a last-resort option, no matter what the White House may say,” Arlie McGregor agreed.
“You always assume the President is lying,” the President said tartly. “Well, thank you very much!”
“We have to make that assumption,” Arlie said, “because we have the responsibility to make good on it if the assumption becomes fact.”
“Well, well,” the President said, tone becoming sarcastic. “Little did I know I had such sophisticated thinking backing me up. Very comforting.”
“It would be,” General Rathbun said, unabashed, “if you ever needed us.”
There was silence for a moment. The President obviously had not anticipated this particular turn in the conversation.
“But you have been diverted, Mr. President,” Ray Stanley said smoothly. “You were about to tell us of your compromise.”
“Thank you, Ray,” the President said. “And thank you, Eulie; thank you both for being here, so soon after your recent family tragedies. It shows an admirable devotion to duty and we all appreciate it. I appreciate it.”
“We are here to serve you, Mr. President,” the Secretary said simply.
“That’s our job,” Eulie Montgomery agreed. “All of us here would do the same.”
There were murmurs of agreement around the table.
“And your compromise, Mr. President?” Eldridge Barnes reminded in a tone unimpressed by pleasantries.
“Ah, yes,” the President said. “Back to business, back to business. Always keeping our noses to the grindstone, eh, El? I am awaiting at this moment a call from the national security adviser. You’ve probably wondered why he isn’t here.”
“Where is he?” El inquired. “Mars?”
“He should be in the US embassy in Lesser Lolómé,” the President said, and could not conceal a certain lighthearted pleasure at their obvious surprise. “After having had a conference with that stout defender of social justice, democratic principle, and unalienable human rights, Sheikh Mustafa, known to those who love him as The Mouse.”
Instinctively Ray looked at Eulie and El. Arlie McGregor looked at Bill Rathbun. The Vice President looked carefully at no one. And no one looked at Helen. Her expression, had they done so, would have been seen to be curious, attentive, and completely noncommittal. This, though they would not have realized it, but he did, was for the benefit of the only one whose eyes went instinctively to her face, her husband.
The Secretary of State finally broke the silence cautiously.
“I assume there was some reason for not notifying the department of this mission?” he said.
The President gave him a smile that could almost have been described as carefree.
“We’re all part of the team,” he said lightly. “We all contribute our efforts to the same end. It all goes into the same pot, right? If it works, we all share the same glory.”
“Some of us more than others,” El Barnes murmured.
“If it is glory,” Eulie Montgomery remarked. “What exactly is Jaime expected to accomplish, Mr. President?”
“Wait,” the President said. He glanced at his watch. “Any moment now”—and the phone rang.
