Preserve and Protect (60 page)

“And furthermore—what’s involved in Orrin’s winning? Just ambition? Just to sit in the White House and say, ‘I’m President?’ You know him better than that, Crystal. He wants it because that’s where you can do things—that’s where he can try to make real the vision he has of the United States of America.”

Her eyes softened with the memory of many things.

“I’ve lived with that vision a long time, you know. Since way back down the years when I first met him at the University of Illinois and heard how Orrin Knox was going to be President and remake the world. It’s a good vision—a decent vision. The world could do worse.” She smiled. “I’m in the habit of believing in it. I thought Hal was too.”

“He does,” Crystal said, “at heart. It’s just that my—episode—and now apparently rewarding the man whose supporters did it—have got him pretty well down.” She tried to look confident but didn’t quite make it. “He’ll get over it … I think.”

“He will if you help him,” Beth said. “Will you?”

Crystal sighed.

“I don’t have much cause to like Ted Jason, either.”

“No,” Beth agreed, and didn’t argue. “What does Stanley think about it?”

Crystal smiled with a mixture of irony and affection for her father.

“He’s a politician. He doesn’t like it, but he can understand why it’s being done.”

“I don’t think,” Beth said slowly, “that Orrin really has a choice. He couldn’t maneuver if he wanted to, really. The need for unity is too great. And that’s a hard thing, for a proud man. I hope Hal can come to see that. He will if you help him. It may make him a little more tolerant of his father.” She smiled again. “It isn’t always easy, being married to a Knox, is it? They’re such combinations of idealism and practicality, bull-headedness and sensitivity. They need one’s help a lot more than they let on. Hal will accept this, if you help him. Do you think you can?”

Crystal returned the smile, a little hesitantly.

“If you can help Orrin, I guess I can help Hal.”

“I hope so,” Beth said, “because I’d hate to have anything permanent come between them as a result of this.”

“I wonder how Governor Jason feels right now,” Crystal said in a quizzical tone. “He must be feeling pretty smart, knowing he’s indispensable to Orrin’s victory.”

“You know,” Beth said, “in a way I think I feel sorriest of all for him. Because he actually thinks he’s controlling the forces of history … and all the time, they’re controlling him.”

If this were true, he did not know it, as he sat in the glass-enclosed veranda and stared out into the tastefully lighted garden in the still, humid night. Patsy had been up when he came in, but after a couple of attempts to find out what had happened at the White House, she had recognized the fact that he was not going to tell her and had gone to bed.

“Surely there isn’t any DOUBT—” she had said in an exasperated yet worried voice, turning at the door.

He had shaken his head impatiently.

“No, I suppose not, but I’m going to think about it for a while.”

“Well, just don’t take so long he changes his mind!” she urged tartly, and he smiled a tired yet ironic smile at the thought of boxed-in Orrin Knox.

“He won’t,” he said.

But there was, of course, the possibility, even now; for Orrin Knox, as he well knew, was not as boxed-in as many at this hour wished to think. Orrin Knox could never really be boxed in, because he was still, after three decades in politics, an independent man. He was one of the very few in Washington who still had both the option and the independence to say, “To hell with you,” and mean it. Ted was convinced that if he pushed the Secretary far enough, he would do exactly that: he would take Bob Munson or the President on the ticket, he would go down to defeat, rather than make the final compromise. Someone had to yield in this final confrontation of theirs, and the Governor knew that in the last analysis it would not be Orrin Knox.

Therefore the problem came to him, and now as he thought back over all these recent hours and days and weeks and months, there seemed to him no very clear-cut way to approach it. He had deplored violence, but violence had come to his aid. He had criticized violence, but violence had refused to desert his cause. Finally this afternoon he had, in effect, turned on violence and shown it who was master; but still violence marched beneath his banner. How did you get rid of it, once it had made up its savage mind to adopt you?

He had not put much stock originally in the story Helen-Anne had discovered, though he had been the first to think of the possibility of a further meeting, and to try to remove himself from any connection with it. Even now, he could not entirely believe the account of Vasily Tashikov, the agricultural attaché, the dark alliance with NAWAC to disrupt and if possible overturn American society.

There was always something faintly laughable to most Americans about that sort of deep, dark conspiracy: their education, their press, their churches and their literature had conditioned them to laugh at it, and they did. It did not occur to them to reason why they had been conditioned to laugh: they just did, automatically, spontaneously, obediently. It simplified matters greatly.

Now, however, he was being asked to take it seriously, and it had been presented to him in a context in which he must take it seriously or say goodbye to the Vice Presidency now and very probably to any chance of becoming President later. Helen-Anne’s scribblings carried an air of conviction, and they were detailed enough to compel belief. As Orrin had said, such things had happened in many other countries; it was quite logical to believe they could happen here. Indeed they had, but somehow in the face of all the facts over all the years, a great many Americans with the power and the position to ridicule had kept the country laughing, and somehow it had all been gradually fuzzed out, chortled away, jokingly forgotten. Meanwhile conspiracy had gone right on, though this, perhaps, was the first time it had moved directly into the campaign of a candidate for President. That it would eventually do so had always been inevitable. Now it had.

So it was up to him to deal with it. And although a natural pride had prevented him from admitting it at the White House, he had been genuinely appalled and even somewhat frightened by the disclosures in the notes. Not desperately frightened, for he had no doubt that he could control it in the showdown: this afternoon had already proven that. But disturbed enough so that he must acknowledge to himself the existence in his life of a factor he had not anticipated and had not originated—something from outside—something new for a Jason. He had apparently not been a free agent in his own house after all, during recent events. That, perhaps, was what stung and upset him more than anything else.

So what was the problem? Orrin wanted him to make a clean break—the necessity of preserving his own independence made a clean break advisable—the welfare, perhaps the safety, of the country made it imperative—why did he hesitate? Why didn’t he stop debating with himself and call Spring Valley right now?

His hand was halfway to the telephone when he paused and slowly withdrew it.

He hesitated because he had too much faith in the country. He hesitated because he really did not believe, as he had said, that a drunken huddle at the Hilton could really shake the innate strength of the Republic. He hesitated because after this afternoon he was confident he could control the violent and presently bring them back to the safer channels of democracy. He hesitated because he felt that Americans had a right to protest policies they did not agree with, and he honestly believed that the great majority who did so were sincere, earnest, loyal.

That was where his real battle came, as he saw it: that was the point at which he had to decide the sort of man Edward Montoya Jason was.

If it were true that alien elements were behind the violence, if it were true that forces hostile to America were active in his campaign—and if it were true that these forces were organized and effective and more helpful to him than any other political element in the country seemed to be at the moment—still he must not lose sight of the fact that protest and dissent were part of the very fabric of America.

He must not be false to the foundations of democracy itself. He must not betray the soul of America to save America, for that would be Pyrrhic victory indeed.

Therefore, how far should he go in repudiating the violent, if to do so would be to repudiate the many perfectly sincere and loyal millions whom the violent temporarily seemed to be leading? They all wanted him: how could he repudiate the leaders and not lose the masses? And if he repudiated the leaders, would he not thereby be robbing the masses—the sincere, democratic, protesting masses—of their right to protest, even as he robbed himself of their support?

He glanced at his watch. It was almost two a.m. The house was very still. His two hours were almost up. He must do something. Weighing everything in the balance—his political future—the fact that he had already begun to prepare his followers this afternoon, in his comment on what “those who may be close to Orrin Knox” might do to change his policies—the possibility of what he could accomplish within the Administration to secure a respected place for honest dissent—it was clear what his choice must be.

Again he reached for the telephone. As he did so it rang under his hand, startling him so that he jumped. He picked up the receiver and the little rushing winds of long-distance came to his ear.

“Yes?” he said, and though he tried to keep the excitement from his voice he could not completely succeed.

“Hi,” she said over three thousand miles of troubled continent. “Can you hear that?”

“I hear long-distance,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Is there something else?”

“It’s the ocean. I’m down at the beach house. Can’t you hear the Pacific?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “now I do.” And he did, the long crashing roll that pounded in on “Vistazo’s” shore. “Isn’t it a little late for you to be down there alone?”

“I came down on Trumpet,” she said. “Both dogs are with me, and I have your .45. So I’m safe, I guess. Also, I’m about to go back up. I just wanted to call from down here and tell you—”

She hesitated and he said, “Yes?” in an eager, almost desperate tone.

“—to tell you that I’ve been doing some more thinking.” She laughed, a light silvery sound against the slow, withdrawing, returning roar.
“More
thinking! It’s all I’ve been doing for the past ten days. Anyway, I’m coming back in the morning. I think a Vice Presidential candidate needs a wife beside him, not out here.”

“I—I do too,” he said, his words beginning to tumble over one another in haste and excitement. “What—why—what have I done—?”

“What have you done to deserve this unexpected pleasure?” she asked, and again the silvery laugh came clearly from his native shore. “I don’t exactly know, except I just think now is the time I ought to be there.”

“Regardless of what I—whether I—”

For the third time she laughed.

“Oh, my dear, I’m not one of the Trojan women. Regardless of what you—whether you—which you. I just happen to think things are going to work out all right, and I want to be there when you accept the nomination. You are going to, aren’t you?”

He hesitated now.

“Would you come back to me even if I didn’t?”

“I told you I’ve decided that’s where I belong. I’m coming in on TWA, noon your time. Shall I come to Kennedy Center or—”

“Pat will send a car to bring you to the house. There’s no telling what may be going at the Center.”

“Not what went on yesterday, I hope.”

“No,” he said firmly. “That, I think I can promise.”

But how he was going to make good on the promise he did not at that moment know. Nonetheless he knew it had to be. He picked up the phone again, woke Roger P. Croy at Fort Myer, asked him to call George Wattersill, asked them to come to the house as soon as they could make it. “Yes, sir!” Roger Croy said, his voice holding cheerful certainty. At that moment Ted was not so cheerful, nor so certain.

He returned to the veranda, sat motionless, alone, eyes wide, staring into far distances, for perhaps ten minutes; got up abruptly, returned to the study, lifted the receiver, dialed Spring Valley.

So all things in politics finally fell into place, the Secretary thought, if you waited for them long enough. “Time and I,” said Mazarin, and so, in some strange way, it had been for him. He had wanted to be President so long, had tried for the nomination unsuccessfully three times—and now at last he had it, in the strange turnings of fate that so often made of men’s conscious desires and deliberate intentions an ironic when not pathetic charade.

Had it, and had also the running mate he had wanted—not wanted; sought—not sought; hoped he would have—hoped he would not have. Had it, and had also a situation in the country as grave as any that had ever confronted it. Every resource of good will, good faith, intelligence, integrity, decency, courage, honor, was going to be needed, from him and from all of them; and he had a running mate he could not be sure of in any of these.

What had he gotten himself and the country into?

And why?

The cruel choices of politics, he had described them to his son: and so they were. He knew that tonight across the country millions of people who believed in Orrin Knox just as deeply as Ted Jason’s supporters believed in him, must be dismayed and appalled by his intention to take on the ticket a man they regarded as so dangerous and so completely opposed to the things Orrin Knox had always stood for.

He regarded him as dangerous, too; nothing had changed his feelings about that. The difference between Orrin Knox and those who held the devil-theory of Edward Jason was that Orrin, as he had also told his son, had a basic faith in Ted’s decency as a human being. Given that, he could be brought back from the far paths toward which ambition had taken him.

He knew with a wry certainty that Ted had the same feeling about him. It was not such a bad basis upon which to establish a practical working relationship, though politically there still were major problems.