A Thing of State, page 9
“You said all that,” Ray said with the chuckle he used to deflect importunate questioners. “I didn’t. I knew all I’d have to give you would be the bare facts, and you’d take it from there.”
“Yes,” Jimmy Van said, languid drawl becoming more pronounced as he began to zero in on it. “But that doesn’t tell us why the NSC meeting. Do you always react this strongly to Sidi’s routine threats?”
“We always take him seriously,” Ray Stanley said. He lowered his voice, but still with an easy air of casual conversation that misled both the Chief Justice, who passed by and nodded, and Joanie Bourassa, who, not having been informed of the NSC results, smiled and waved brightly from across the room.
“Confidentially,” he said. “According to reports we get—”
“From whom?” Able interrupted.
“‘Sources,’” Ray Stanley said blandly. “Isn’t that what you people always quote? ‘Sources’ always have all the information. Anyway, we have been advised that Sidi has been acquiring substantial additions to his military force—”
“From whom?” Able repeated, and grinned. “You might as well tell us, Mr. Secretary. I’ve found my key question in all this. And intend to keep on asking it.”
“You bulldogs of the media!” Ray exclaimed with a laugh. “We don’t know from whom, and we don’t really know for certain all the details. But we do know he’s being much more belligerent all of a sudden, and we do know it may pose some threat to the peace of the region and possibly the peace of the world. Why don’t you get your teeth into the possibilities, Able? Speculation, conjuration, admonition! They ought to keep both Washington Wrangle and WorldView going for a while.”
“I’m sure it will move to the top of the agenda for both,” Able said with the undisguised pride he always showed in his two highly rated television programs. “But you still haven’t given us the other piece of the puzzle.”
“Right,” Jimmy Van agreed, scooping up a stuffed mushroom from a passing tray and consuming it in one smoothly practiced gulp. “What,” he added, as he cleaned his fingers delicately, one by one, with a cocktail napkin, “is the US going to do about it?”
“Well,” Ray Stanley said soberly, turning his head to survey their happily gossiping fellow guests so that only Willie Wilson, for whom it was intended, caught his quick wink, “that is something you may seriously and genuinely speculate about. No decision has been reached except to monitor the situation closely and, if necessary, prepare a carefully planned response.”
“Which would be?” Sally inquired, also disposing of a mushroom—how many tons of hors d’oeuvres did the average Washington partygoer consume in a year, the Secretary wondered. “Another military escapade?”
“I don’t know at this time,” the Secretary said. His tone of sober thoughtfulness turned deeply confidential, though his expression remained blandly uncommunicative for the benefit of those shrewd observers who might be watching them, of whom there were many at a party at Dolly’s. “That’s where your input would be very helpful to us. How strong a response do you think the country would stand for?”
“Oh, well,” James Van Rensselaer Burden said in a haughtily dismissive tone, “if this is just a trial balloon because that wimpish soul in the White House doesn’t trust his own judgment and wants us to do his thinking for him—”
“And stir up the country for him,” Able Montague interjected.
“And put on the pressure for his benefit,” Sally Holliwell said. “Well, I, for one, say the hell with it.” Her sharp-featured face, sharp of mouth, sharp of nose, sharp of chin, sharp of eyes, able to smile but coldly, looked even sharper than usual. “Let him take a position on his own, for once! Why should we always play water boy?”
“Water person, darling,” Able said with a chuckle, going for the smoked salmon and sour cream offered by one of Dolly’s favorite catering staff. “Let’s keep our genders straight. Yes, Ray, how about it? What does he want to do? Or does he know?”
“I repeat,” Ray Stanley said calmly, “we’re watching the situation very closely. We hope we don’t have to take any action at all. If we do, it will, we hope, be appropriate and carefully planned.” He shrugged with deliberate indifference. “Use it or not, as you like.” He smiled. “You don’t have to be reporters, you know. This is a happy social occasion at Dolly’s. Nobody is supposed to have a care in the world. Enjoy!”
“We’ll use it,” Able promised with a rather grim smile.
“Oh, yes,” Jimmy Van agreed, elevating his nose and looking down it through his deliberately out-of-fashion pince-nez, “you may be sure of that. With,” he added with satisfaction as he mentioned the name of his 323-newspaper column, “considerable disapproval in the case of ‘As I See It,’ I can tell you.”
“It certainly won’t fly on Capitol Perspective,” Sally Holliwell agreed, “if this is going to involve any kind of imperialistic, big-stick attempt to bludgeon a silly two-bit old opponent—to say nothing of the American people—into bowing to the administration’s will.” She turned to Willie Wilson with a very firm smile. “You’ll come on my program and condemn it, won’t you, Senator?”
“He’ll have to consider all the aspects and weigh all the considerations before he can give you an answer to that one,” Able remarked with a sly little grin.
“Don’t we always?” Willie inquired blandly. “That’s our job, on the Hill.”
“I simply won’t stand for another ridiculous and foredoomed use of American military force!” Sally said flatly. “I just won’t have it!”
“And there,” Willie said with a grin that did not, and was not intended to, rob it of sting, “speaks the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Or the President. Take your pick. Which would you rather be, Sally?”
“I’m a member of the Washington media,” Sally said with a tart conviction that was obviously absolutely sincere and not softened a bit by the rather strained smile with which she spoke, “and that’s quite powerful enough for me, thank you.”
“It does give one an enviable ability to attack without responsibility, doesn’t it?” Senator Wilson said. “And without being exposed to the same public scrutiny you bestow so lovingly upon others. Who guards the guardians? A ridiculous question, in this day and age. The answer was established years ago: no one.”
“Well,” Ray Stanley remarked, as their media friends all looked starchily offended, and the conversation threatened to go further in obviously hostile and predictable directions he didn’t really think they all wanted to go, “Dolly will be ringing the dinner bell any moment, and I must find my lovely wife and at least say hello before we go in. I think”—he pulled out the seating card he had been given at the door and gave it a quick glance—“that I’m going to have the great privilege and pleasure of being seated next to Mrs. Ambassador van der Heuft of the Netherlands.”
“Lucky you!” Sally said, coming down from her imperious high with a rather shaky laugh, since she, like all of them, did not really want a major argument in public; and anyway, her program awaited.
“The loveliest rose in the garden,” Able Montague said with a dry little chuckle. “Before we part, though, Mr. Secretary, I just wanted to say that I, too, shall be most strongly opposed to any use of force by the United States.”
“Or even any belligerent and unnecessary rhetoric,” James Van Rensselaer Burden agreed. “There is such a thing as being too crude, you know. Too, too crude.”
“Willie,” the Secretary said, “come along and say hello to Mary.”
“I already h—” Willie started to say and caught himself. “By all means. Can’t get too much of a good thing.”
“Right,” Ray said. “Take care, you all.” He smiled pleasantly, took Willie’s arm, and steered him into the crowd just as Dolly appeared at the door and began rounding up the guests in her pleasantly firm fashion.
“Now,” Willie said quickly, “what is all this?”
“Three big ones,” the Secretary murmured in his ear as they smiled their way to Mary across the room. “At least. And the long-range missiles to deliver them. Plus, new launching facilities beneath Pointe Sinistre. Another move on Lesser Lolómé, and God knows what else.”
“Bad,” Willie said.
“Bad,” the Secretary agreed.
“Come along,” Dolly said, materializing between them and linking an arm with each. “You, too, Mary. Feed your faces and let those razor-sharp minds charged with the preservation of civilization rest for a while.”
* * *
And so the Secretary did, chatting brightly and innocuously with apple-plump Mrs. Ambassador van der Heuft of the Netherlands on his right and mantis-thin Mrs. Ambassador Tri Van Duen of Vietnam on his left. Both tried to pump him on various subjects of interest to their husbands, seated elsewhere among the tables for eight with which Dolly always filled her dining room, but with lifelong skill he turned it all aside and kept the conversation on the straight and humdrum road. He was aware of their frustration and amused by it, but never indicated by so much as a twitch that he knew what they were attempting. It was all part of the Washington game.
There were no more confrontations such as he had enjoyed with the media, and he did enjoy them, particularly when he could shepherd the formulations of a news story as he had tonight. He was sure they would raise hell, but they would get the public debate going; and, as usual with many of the Washington press corps, their obvious bias would create a healthy skepticism of what they said in the minds of many readers and viewers, and a consequent healthy discounting of it.
For the remainder of the evening he let the tides of chatter sweep over him and didn’t bother to think very much; kept his mouth going with all requisite politeness but, as Mary described it, “turned his mind off and gave it a rest.” When Dolly at leave-taking expressed regret that Eulie had not been able to make it, he told her that he understood Eulie’s long ordeal might soon be coming to an end. They paid regretful but admiring tribute to her strength of character and to the loving concern she had shown throughout for Herbie. “Small consolation at the moment you lose a life’s companion,” Dolly said with the sigh of one who knew. “But comforting, in time.”
(At that moment on R Street, the Deputy Secretary of State had just been roused from uneasy sleep by her husband’s voice calling weakly from the adjoining room. His doctors had telephoned that afternoon, just before she left to go to the White House for the NSC meeting, to tell her that they gave him perhaps another two weeks before the inevitable occurred. Always realistic, which usually meant pessimistic too, she gave him even less. With the instinct of thirty years of marriage, she knew he concurred. They were now equally dedicated to making his last days as comfortable as possible for one another. On his part this coupled a steadily weakening physical condition with a gentle, almost luminous determination to go gracefully and without fuss; and on hers, a determination to see it through as bravely and lovingly as she could.
(She thought now, for an instant and without regret, of Dolly’s party; then dismissed it. Ray had been there, surrounded by media; and perhaps it was as well that there had been no hint to those high-priced, famous ferrets, that there was any friction within the department. Not that it was ever open friction: she and the Secretary had long ago agreed to disagree on some aspects of foreign policy. So far, none of their conflicts had ever surfaced outside the department. In any event, her place was here. There would be time tomorrow, and perhaps for days and weeks to come, if Sidi did not swiftly pull in his horns, when she would have more than enough opportunities to state her position.
(She dismissed all that and went dutifully and gladly to answer her dying husband’s call; a tall, heavy, statuesque, and quite forbidding woman, moving with the lightness that often accompanies height and weight such as hers, carrying the burden of a breaking heart, along with all her other burdens, with grace.)
The Secretary was in bed by midnight, but as usual he was still awake at one AM, restless, tense, his mind racing in chaotic disjunction ranging from the most innocuous to the most gravely portentous. He tried not to stir too much, tried to keep his breathing regular, diligently pretended sleep. As always, it didn’t work.
“So what are our friends in the media going to do?” Mary inquired quietly at his side. “Eat you alive?”
“Probably,” he said.
“What is it this time?” she asked, and after he told her, uttered a small, exasperated sound.
“He is annoying, that one,” she said. “I wish we could wipe out these two-bit tyrants when we have the chance. Every time we leave one essentially untouched, he rises like the phoenix to plague us again. We never learn. We never have the guts to follow through. It’s disheartening.”
“It’s symptomatic,” he said. “Willie Wilson thinks there’s a dry rot at the heart of our whole decision-making process in State, Pentagon, and White House. But I don’t see how we can proceed much differently than we are.”
“So you wind up with State and the Pentagon wanting to go slow and the President tempted to throw his weight around.”
“He did throw it around,” the Secretary said with a wry chuckle. “Sidi threw it right back at him. So now he’s going to embark on an effort, momentarily secret but soon to become ostentatiously public, to get Sidi’s attention and to get our allies and the UN to put on the pressure. Diplomatic, at first. Then sanctions. Then reestablishing the coalition as a form of public pressure. Plus, continued efforts at behind-the-scenes pressure—”
“Which you’ve just told me have already failed.”
“I’m inclined to agree with the President that they will succeed in the long run. When Sidi has time to think it over.”
“Suppose he thinks it over and decides to go right ahead?”
“Now, Mary,” he said patiently. “You’re beginning to sound like Eulie.”
“Eulie and I have been seeing eye to eye on things for forty years. I do hope your influence comes down on the side of being tough with him. It’s the only language he respects.”
“You two,” he said. “You’d have us in a third Gulf War in a minute, if you had your way.”
“That isn’t fair, Ray Stanley. Just because we’re more skeptical than you are about our friends in the Middle East—just because we’re more realistic—” She laughed. “But, then, women are more realistic, right?”
“I’m trying to be more realistic,” he said. “There are limits to what we can do in the world, given how numerous our interests are and how thinly spread our forces are.”
“And how sympathetic you are to the Arabs versus the rest of the world. Eulie and I have had this argument with you ever since we first met her in Riyadh, and you haven’t changed one bit. Thank goodness I’ve been able to maintain a little objectivity over the years. Thank goodness somebody in the family isn’t besotted with the Arabs.”
“I’m not ‘besotted’ with the Arabs,” he protested mildly. “Sympathetic to a good many of their aspirations, yes. Not so impressed with some of Israel’s, yes. But not ‘besotted’ with either one, I hope. I like to think I’m a better Secretary of State than that.”
“You’re a very good Secretary of State,” she conceded. “But I think you should be a little more decisive with Sidi.”
“The President doesn’t really want us to be more decisive with Sidi,” he said, “despite the tough talk. He really does think Sidi will back down, with enough skillful pressure. But apply real pressure? Naked force? Not likely or possible, with so much else to worry about. And I certainly support him in that.”
“We’ll regret it,” she predicted. “But let’s go to sleep. I don’t feel like an extended argument right now. I had a long and exhausting talk with Bets this afternoon and I’m worn out. In addition to which I had to sparkle for my dinner partner at Dolly’s, the Chief Justice. That man is brilliant but dullsville. I hope Mesdames van der Heuft and Van Duen were livelier for you.”
“Not noticeably,” he said with a chuckle. “Neither is the smartest woman that ever came down the pike, though Madame van der Heuft has the edge, such as it is.” He sighed, suddenly serious, and responded to the name of their daughter and only child, now in the throes of possible divorce. “What’s new with Bets? More crisis?”
She sighed, too.
“Oh, yes. Samir has suddenly taken to staying out late until all hours—she doesn’t know why—and the children are asking questions—and her girlfriends, particularly Joanie Bourassa, are commiserating and also asking questions—and life in general is just sheer hell—and she’s about to give up.”
“I thought she’d given up a couple of months ago,” he said. “What’s changed?”
“Well, she keeps hoping. And I keep telling her to hang in there—the same things we’ve said right along. I think Samir has been a good husband according to his lights.”
“I think he’s really gone a long way toward adapting to our Western ways,” he agreed. “He’s really been very considerate to her and the kids, I think. And very respectful to us. Couldn’t ask for a more thoughtful son-in-law.”
“I think it’s the staying out late that’s provoked this latest row,” she said. “He’s really never done that, even though he comes from a culture that’s very male-oriented and night-oriented. If they were still living in Cairo, she’d be lucky to see him home more than one or two nights a week. As near as I can gather, he hasn’t started going out much more than that. And it seems it’s only in the last month or so.”
“The fragile forties,” he remarked, “when, if you’re going to wander, it really begins.”
“He hasn’t been a wanderer. That’s what’s got her upset.”
“Does she have any idea where he goes?”
“He tells her he’s going to the mosque on Massachusetts Avenue, for one thing, and then he talks vaguely about some ‘really nice new club in Georgetown where a lot of embassy people go.’ She asked him to take her there tonight, as a matter of fact, but he brushed her off with some excuse that didn’t ring true and apparently flung out of the house with an unusual vehemence, for him. He’s usually such a mild soul.”
