Capable of Honor (10 page)

The Secretary shrugged, though it cost him much to do it.

“You want to stay,” he said in a voice he succeeded in making indifferent. “So stay.”

Again the President uttered a curious half-humorous, half-skeptical, regretful sound.

“It isn’t that easy, and you know it.”

“I can’t help you,” Orrin said. “But,” he added quietly, “you can help me. If you so decide.”

The President sighed.

“Yes, I know that.… I want a little more time, Orrin. I haven’t quite got the feel of this yet, I need some sign. I don’t know what’s going to happen in Africa, or in Panama, or Southeast Asia. I don’t know what’s going to happen—”

“You’re looking for justifications,” the Secretary interrupted, aware that he might be running the risk of antagonizing Harley, but feeling also that the conversation had reached an impasse, there was no hope of resolving anything tonight even if time was rushing forward and Walter Dobius and his world were about to send the Jason bandwagon racing down the road. “Something is always happening somewhere that we can’t see the end of. Time has no stops these days. There are no clarifications in the world, only new confusions to displace the old and so give us some illusion that we are moving ahead instead of churning around, as we very probably are, in an ever-narrowing circle. You can wait forever, if you wait for that kind of answer.… Go ahead and run, Mr. President. I’ll support you in every way I can and serve you in any capacity you want afterward. Surely you have no doubts on that score.”

The President shook his head.

“Oh no, of course not. And of course I’d want you to stay right where you are. If, that is—” His voice trailed away and he looked down at the many papers on his desk in an odd way as though he had never seen them before.

“Well,” Orrin said with a sudden decision, starting to rise, “I’m sorry I took your time. I guess we’ll just have to ride out whatever Walter says Friday night and play the whole thing by ear.”

“I’d talk to him, if I were you,” the President suggested. The Secretary paused.

“That’s what Beth says,” he admitted.

“I don’t think it would hurt you. And it might slow him down a little.”

“Not if I haven’t got your support,” Orrin said, trying not to make his emphasis too annoyed.

“Don’t forget that I can help—or hinder—Ted, too. If he’s wise, he won’t encourage Walter to go too far.”

“If I know Ted,” Orrin said tartly, “he’s playing on Walter’s ego and hoping he’ll go as far as possible. There’s one risk you run, you know, Mr. President. You may be underestimating Ted. He may not be as inhibited about waiting for you as I am.”

“Well,” the President said with an equal bluntness, “I’d like to see him try to run if the President decides to! It would be the end of him politically.”

“That didn’t stop him in New Hampshire,” Orrin couldn’t resist pointing out.

The President, for him, looked quite pugnacious.

“And he got soundly licked, and you too, didn’t you?”

Orrin grinned and nodded.

“I still wouldn’t put it past him to try.... Tell me,” he said, changing the subject as he saw the thought beginning to sink into the President’s mind, easygoing and good-natured on most things but, like all Presidents’ minds, touchy and self-defensive when it came to the protection of his own position, “are there any last-minute instructions you want me to give Cullee and Lafe at the UN before tomorrow’s Security Council session? I’m planning to call them around nine tonight at the Waldorf. They’re attending a party Selena Jason Castleberry’s giving for Prince Obifumatta and the People’s Free Republic of Gorotoland.”

“Oh, dear,” the President said with a relieved, humorous expression, diverted from perhaps being forced into a political decision that might cause hurt to someone if it arrived too soon, “oh, my! So Selena’s stepping in, is she? If it isn’t the Jasons we have to worry about, it’s their cousins and their uncles and their aunts.”

“Selena’s doing her bit,” Orrin said. “I understand half the UN and half of New York are there.”

“Except His Royal Highness Prince Terry the M’Bulu of Mbuele,” the President said with a grim little smile.

“Terry is finding out what it means to be the darling of a certain segment of America,” the Secretary said. “It means you’re a darling today and damned tomorrow.”

“It couldn’t happen to a more deserving fellow,” the President said, remembering the high and mighty way Terry had acted on his visit six months ago which had stirred up so much trouble, and recalling also the talk he and Orrin had held with him in this very room, in the midst of it. “But,” he added as other implications came to mind, “still not a pleasant matter for us.”

“No, indeed,” the Secretary said. “He is the legitimate government, and we can’t let the Communists get in there. So there we are.”

“Give Cullee and Lafe my best,” the President said. “They know what I have in mind, if necessary.”

“They know,” Orrin said thoughtfully. “It would be a sensation, right enough. And not on a very major issue. But—” he shrugged. “It’s all major. There aren’t any minor issues these days. The world turns on every one, for all we know, so we have to proceed on that basis, since the Communists force us to.” He sighed. “I’ll call you if the boys have anything startlingly new to report.”

“I doubt if they will. Personally, I’m going to bed early. I’d suggest you do the same.”

“I’ll try,” Orrin said. He was unable to resist a parting shot. “I hope you have a good talk with Ted, whenever it happens, and manage to impress him with the gravities as well as the honors of the office.”

“I look forward to it,” the President said with what, for him, was a surprisingly mischievous little smile. “I may not make you squirm, Orrin, but I think it would be rather fun with Ted.”

“Yes,” the Secretary said dryly. “If what you’ve just done was
not
make me squirm, then I really feel sorry for Ted. And causing me to feel that, I might add, is quite an achievement.”

The President laughed.

“My love to Beth.”

“Always,” the Secretary said.

It was with an odd mixture of amusement, anger, frustration, and hopelessness that Orrin sat back against the cushions as the driver of his official department limousine guided it slowly over the hushed and slippery streets toward Spring Valley. Very few cars were out, there was only the occasional sound of chains slapping against fenders or the soft susurrus of snow tires creeping cautiously by in the ghostly avenues to break the white silence that held the city. It was one of those curiously deserted and exposed moments in Washington when the past for some reason seems very close, when the figures of complicated Tom Jefferson in his study, or Andy Jackson on a horse, or Abe Lincoln stalking thoughtfully along with his cape pulled tight against the cold, come easily to mind; in which it seems that anything—or everything—might happen.

Or nothing, the Secretary of State told himself wryly. Apparently, as far as the President was concerned, nothing. It had been a good many months since he had seen Harley Hudson so irresolute. This was almost the old Harley, the one who had been a timorous and worried Vice President until the sudden death of his vigorous predecessor had plunged him abruptly into the center of the world’s events. After that, Harley had not been irresolute—until now. The irresolution was understandable enough to other men of power. The President had power and he didn’t want to give it up: felt, morally, that he should; felt, intellectually, that he could not; knew, actually, that it was entirely up to him and that no one could force him one way or the other; and so was caught on the points of conscience and duty and dilemma in a way that probably made it quite literally impossible for him at this moment to do anything. He had said he wanted a sign, Orrin remembered wryly, while the car skidded slightly at 23rd and Massachusetts Avenue as it swung around Sheridan Circle, and then steadied itself and crept carefully up Embassy Row. Well, Orrin had tried to give him one—it couldn’t have been any clearer if he had walked up and down Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House gates carrying a sign that said FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE SOMEBODY ELSE A CHANCE. But the President, he knew, had to move in his own good time, though every day, seemingly, made it more difficult for him to move in the direction Orrin and Ted Jason wanted him to.

Actually there was every evidence that he wanted to run again. He had permitted his name to go into the New Hampshire primary and had soundly trounced both Orrin and Ted, each of whom had maintained that their backers had acted without their permission. Of course the President had maintained the same thing, and undoubtedly each of the three had been convinced that his own desire to remain aloof had been quite genuine. Nonetheless, there they all were in the contest, and the President had won by a landslide. Then he had again permitted his name to go into the Wisconsin primary—this time, by dint of vehement insistence and threats of all sorts of dire reprisals against their overeager lieutenants, both Orrin and Ted had managed to stay out and give him a clear field—and again he had won by a landslide.

Meanwhile at his press conferences he had played a game of half-answer and jocular sidestep worthy of his predecessor at his peak. Nobody had pinned him down yet, though many skilled people had tried. And always, for the record, he had firmly and without equivocation reiterated the statement he had made to the Senate the day after his succession a year ago: he would not be a candidate for re-election.

With this combination of noble purpose on the one hand and political flirtation on the other, he had successfully kept the matter in his own hands, and had, as Orrin told him, paralyzed the two potential contenders who were so anxious to succeed him. The Secretary of State, who was certainly not one to be let alone by Walter Dobius and his world in such a personally embarrassing situation, found himself subjected to a constant barrage of questioning whenever he exposed himself to the press, be it at formal press conference or in one of those hurried running interrogatories that always accompany the arrival and departure of a Secretary of State before the committees of the Congress.

This was an old game, and both he and his questioners played it with a certain humor; but the constant necessity to deny his own ambitions and maintain with a straight face that he saw no evidence of the President’s would sometimes bring him home to the rambling house in Spring Valley in little mood for jovial chitchat. This put an extra burden on Beth, but fortunately her long experience as an old campaigner’s wife usually came to the rescue in time.

The more he thought about it now, as the limousine crossed Wisconsin Avenue, passed Ward Circle, and made the final run into Spring Valley, the less patient and less tolerant he felt about the President. Harley was obviously about to be confronted by a major démarche on the part of the Jasons in this speech by Walter Dobius, a dramatic rallying behind Ted of all the psychological and actual forces Walter could command. The President could still act, but apparently he was unable to see that his area of action would inevitably be restricted to some degree as soon as all of Walter’s friends and supporters came out on Saturday with their columns and editorials, their news reports and their special television and radio playbacks that would, the Secretary knew, flood the country over the weekend. A massive barrage of public opinion, a heavy psychological climate, would immediately be formed in the wake of Walter’s speech. The longer the President waited the more difficult it would be for him to escape its oppressive and hampering confines.

As for his own position, the Secretary decided as the car drew up at his door and he bade the driver good night with wishes for a safe journey back downtown, it inevitably would have to be just what he had told Beth earlier in the day. He would have to announce his own candidacy, whether the President liked it or not, and he would have to plunge immediately into his campaign. He had a reasonably good organization in most of the states, party leaders who had supported him twice before in his unsuccessful tries for the nomination and had given active indication they would again. He had a modest amount of money and a few substantially moneyed backers. He had his name and his record. He had Beth. He had himself. He was not afraid of the future, but as he stamped the snow from his boots and removed them, then hung his coat in the hall closet and went along to the comfortable living room where he knew she would be reading in front of the fire, he could have wished that it were arriving a little more on his terms.

“Well,” she said, closing the book (New Myths and Old Realities, by one of Walter’s more outspoken competitors in the great seesaw of American opinion) and looking up with a smile, “how did it go?”

“He wants to run, but he wants someone to tell him to.”

“And did you?”

The Secretary made a quizzical sound. “I certainly did.”

“And is he?”

He shook his head in an impatient way.

“Oh, of course not. It will have to be done over and over, and all the while he’ll be inching closer and closer. Suddenly one day he’ll find himself in it.” He frowned. “Meanwhile, Walter will have made his speech and Ted will be running and I will be running. It will all end up in a very embarrassing tangle. But that’s what happens when you have conscience in the White House. The White House always wins, but conscience has to have its day.”

“I’m sure he has other motives than just ego,” Beth said, and the Secretary nodded quickly.

“Oh, certainly. I’m not denying Harley’s integrity or good heart. But—it puts me on the spot, right enough.”

“All right, then,” she said briskly, “when do we hit the road?” He gave her a humorously grateful smile and immediately looked more relaxed.

“Hank,” he said, “I think you’re more bloodthirsty about this than I am. When do you want to hit the road?”

“It would be a little premature before Walter’s speech, wouldn’t it? He called, by the way. He wants you to call him.”

“Oh?” Orrin Knox said. A definite interest came into his tone. “Where is he, Leesburg?”

“Out there in the snow,” Beth said with a smile, “spinning his little webs. Probably just putting the finishing touches on his speech for Ted. Why don’t you interrupt him?”