Promise of Joy (7 page)

Orrin, of course, had not suffered those he believed to be fools quite so equably. Possessed of great intelligence, a lively temper and a tongue sometimes too willing to be tart and impatient, he had often responded broadside to his enemies instead of trying to go around them. More often than not, this had worked in the Senate, whose members normally favored the more subtle approach but in his case respected his sheer intelligence and the powerful will that went with it. It was not, however, until Harley Hudson appointed him Secretary of State that he became, as he himself acknowledged, a much more moderate and diplomatic soul. Not too diplomatic, for that wouldn’t have been Orrin: but at least more reasonable, more willing to compromise, a little less certain that he had all the answers to everything.

Then had come the convention, Harley’s decision to run again, Orrin’s belief that his dream of the White House was finally put to rest forever; Harley’s mysterious death, Orrin’s battle with Ted for the nomination, Orrin’s squeak-in victory and his realization that he had to give in and compromise with Ted and his supporters if he wanted to win. Out of that had come, suddenly, a man mature in a way Orrin had never really been mature before. And then had come horror at the Monument, and out of that—what kind of Orrin?

The President did not know and his puzzlement must have shown in his face to some degree when he arrived at heavily guarded “Checkpoint Alpha,” because the reporters and television cameramen waiting there rushed forward as far as they were allowed, which wasn’t much, to shout their frantic appeals for enlightenment. What was the nominee going to do?

“I don’t know,” the President called out sharply, “and if I did, you know I wouldn’t tell you. Why don’t you wait and see, as the Committee and I are going to have to do?”

“Old bastard!” the
Post
commented, not too quietly. “He won’t tell us anything.”

“That’s right,” the President responded with equal cordiality. “Why should I?”

“The people have a right to know!” the
Post
shouted indignantly; but the President’s response was a smile of such openly sarcastic amusement that it almost said aloud, “Look who’s talking!” As such it was promptly wiped off the television screens and he was allowed to enter the building without further questioning, followed by mutters quite as savage, if more muted, as any that had been shouted at him in the streets.

So there it was again, he reflected with an annoyance that again showed briefly in his eyes, that eternal hostility that crippled them all, press and politicians alike: for which, he supposed, he was just as much to blame as they were. Certainly Orrin was, for after an early period of trying to appease critics who were implacably against him on the most fundamental of issues, foreign policy, he had come finally to the conclusion that they could never be appeased, that as long as he pursued what they liked to call a “tough” or “pro-war” policy toward the Communists, they were never going to forgive him, never relent, never be even minimally fair. When he finally decided, permanently, that he must take his stand on what he believed regardless of their opposition, he had guaranteed a state of permanent warfare with the media. Sooner or later all those who supported him were drawn into the same vortex and received the same treatment.

How would it be, the President wondered for a moment as he went mechanically through the motions of greeting the troops inside the doors, smiling, confident and apparently fully in command, if the leaders of the media ever found themselves in a situation where their freedoms were really threatened by the policies they had always so vigorously advocated and supported? How would it be if they turned out to be wrong, if suddenly someone they had raised up—even a Ted Jason, perhaps—turned upon them and, using the public support they themselves had created for him, tore them down? How would they enjoy the harvest they had sown for so many long, bitter years?… But, of course, he dismissed the thought, it would never happen in America. They would always be free to pursue their harshly unbalanced attacks on all who disagreed with them. They would never have to face the reckoning. They would always be safe, always protected, always free to be unrestrained and irresponsible, for such was what they considered freedom to be. Not even if Ted Jason had become President, he was sure, would any attempt ever have been made to attack or control the media. Not even Ted’s most violent supporters would have dared. This was America, and in America such things could not be.

Certainly they would not occur under Orrin Knox, that was sure, even though the President had moments of exasperation and resentment when he almost felt they should. The attack on Orrin now was utterly disgraceful, the wildest and most vicious he had seen in some time, and he had seen a good many in his long service on Capitol Hill. It was not enough that the man must lose his wife to an assassin, he must be accused of helping to plot the whole thing in order to remove someone who disagreed with him from the ticket. What kind of minds they must be, the President thought, Walter who would promulgate such a horrid myth, and his friends who could seize upon and embellish it!

He was frowning when he reached the door of the Playhouse, and it was so they saw him as the guards snapped to attention, and the doorkeeper bellowed, “Ladeez and Gemmun, the Prezdent of the Yewnited States!”—Blair Hannah, Ewan MacDonald MacDonald, Lizzie Hanson McWharter, Mary Buttner Baffleburg and the rest of the National Committee; Robert A. Leffingwell, Patsy Jason Labaiya in heavy mourning for her brother, Lord and Lady Maudulayne, Raoul and Celestine Barre, Vasily Tashikov, Krishna Khaleel and all the other observers domestic and foreign who had been given tickets; the
Times,
the
Post, The Greatest Publication, Time, Newsweek,
Walter Dobius, Frankly Unctuous and the other members of the media who were there by virtue of personal stature, prestige of publication, or the luck of the draw. A President upset, and one obviously in no mood to waste time, or to pretend in any way that the business before them was any less serious than it was.

He strode swiftly down the aisle, mounted the small platform, moved to the lectern at its center; turned quickly to note that the official reporter was seated at the small desk to his left, turned back to look directly into the banked lights of the television cameras that flanked the room.

“Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen,” he said crisply, and waited for a moment as they did so, their expectant eyes never leaving his face. “By virtue of the authority vested in me as chairman of the National Committee, I declare this new special emergency session of the Committee to be now in session for the purpose of selecting a nominee for Vice President of the United States. If the distinguished national committeeman from the state of Washington will oblige us as he did before”—he paused and a little sigh, tired and sad, escaped his lips—“and how short a time ago that was!—then we shall be very grateful.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Luther Redfield said, his voice shaking slightly with the gravity of it; and proceeded in his somewhat florid but desperately sincere fashion to deliver the convocation while they all stood again, heads bowed, and far off the distant sea of NAWAC murmured and rumbled, seeming to lap ominously against the walls of the silent room.

“Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said into the hush that followed, “I wish to offer a suggested resolution of sorrow on behalf of myself and other friends of the late nominee for Vice President—”

“On behalf of all of us, I should think,” the President interrupted in a tone he tried to keep impersonal. “I trust the committeeman does not wish the world to think his grief and that of his friends is exclusive.”

“Mr. President,” Roger Croy said smoothly, “there may be some on this committee less saddened, perhaps, by events, than”—he paused delicately—“some others. For that reason—”

“For that reason, nothing!” the President snapped. “This resolution will be adopted unanimously by this committee. I assume you have also included in it an expression of the Committee’s condolences to the nominee for President for the loss of his wife.”

“We had thought, Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said earnestly, “that perhaps some proponent of the nominee might wish to offer such a—”

“Shame on you!” the President said angrily. “For shame, Governor! For shame, to try to introduce crude partisanship at such a cruel moment! There will be one resolution expressing the unanimous sense of this committee concerning both Governor Jason and Mrs. Knox, so if you don’t have one ready, sit down and let someone else propose it!”

“Mr. President—” Roger P. Croy began indignantly, even as Blair Hannah rose on the other side of the room to seek recognition.

“I have the resolution, Mr. President,” he said in a voice filled with contempt for his mellifluous colleague from Oregon; and read it quickly, a dignified, brief and moving valedictory for Edward Montoya Jason and Elizabeth Henry Knox.

“Is there objection?” the President asked, staring about the room with an expression that indicated, as the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
murmured to the
Boston
Globe,
that there damned well better not be. “Then without objection, the resolution of condolence is adopted unanimously by the Committee.”

He paused for a moment as the room suddenly became very still. Outside, the mob, following closely on television, also fell silent.

“The business of the Committee,” he said slowly, “is to find a new nominee for Vice President. It is not only the tradition, but it is the courtesy we owe him, that the nominee for President should be allowed to make his recommendation to the Committee before we act. Therefore I shall appoint a committee to wait upon the nominee for President and escort him to this chamber at such time as may be mutually convenient—”

“Mr. President,” Ewan MacDonald MacDonald inquired in his gentle but not-to-be-trifled-with burr, “can you advise the Committee as to when—or whether—the nominee for President will be able to attend? There are reports and rumors that his health may not permit it. In that case, perhaps we should proceed at once to—”

“Mr. President!” Mary Buttner Baffleburg said, her roly-poly little body seeming to quiver all over with indignation. “Don’t you try anything like that, now, Ewan! Just don’t you try it! We’re not here to allow any railroading today, I can tell you that! Not one bit of it!”

“Mr. President,” Ewan MacDonald said patiently, “I admire the zeal with which Mrs. Baffleburg protects her candidate’s interests, I always have, but—”

“I don’t have a candidate!” Mary Baffleburg said sharply. “I’m waiting for Orrin Knox to tell us who he wants, just as I should!”

“As I say,” Ewan MacDonald repeated with a little smile, “I admire your independence, Mary. But some of us feel even more independent. We think we ought to go ahead and name a candidate for Vice President and we ought to do it today, not next week sometime.”

“Nobody is proposing ‘next week sometime’!” Mary Baffleburg snapped.

“Well, when the candidate can get here,” Ewan MacDonald said. “When will that be?”

“I don’t know,” Mary Baffleburg replied. “But I can tell you this, Ewan MacDonald, if there’s any attempt to railroad this or prevent him from speaking, or any attempt to put over somebody he doesn’t like on him, then you’re in for a fight, I can tell you that!”

And she sat down, pugnacious little face red and puffing, while the cameras lingered upon it with an amused attention.

“Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said quietly, “perhaps
you
can advise us when we may expect the nominee for President to appear. The distinguished committeeman from Wyoming does have a point, it seems to me, despite the rather violent response of the distinguished committeewoman from Pennsylvania. We can’t wait around forever, you know. We have to have a candidate for Vice President. Possibly, if the candidate for President does not show signs of sufficiently speedy recovery, we may even have to have—”

“Now, Mr. President, just a minute!” Blair Hannah cried, jumping to his feet, while outside a sudden excited roar welled up from the thousands in the parks. “Just a minute, now! Just what does the committeeman from Oregon think he’s trying to do here, anyway?”

“It’s obvious what he’s trying to do,” Asa B. Attwood of California shot out. “He’s trying to dump Orrin Knox, that’s what he’s trying to do, and I tell you, Mr. President, if there is any move to do that more than half this committee is going to walk out and you won’t
have
any committee to nominate a Vice President. So I’d suggest the great former Governor of Oregon had better not get too smart here!”

“Dump Orrin Knox!” a sudden chant came on the wind. “Dump Orrin Knox!”

“Yes, ‘dump Orrin Knox!’” Asa Attwood echoed angrily. “You just try it, you people. You just try it!”

“Well, now, Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said calmly, “I think the committeeman from California is making a great leap somewhere, I don’t know exactly where—certainly not in any sensible direction discernible to me. No one said anything about trying to ‘dump’ the nominee for President. I just said that unless his health recovers sufficiently and soon, we will be forced by the sheer logic of events to ask him to withdraw so we can nominate someone else. That’s simple fact. I don’t see how it warrants such hysteria.”

“It isn’t hysteria,” Asa Attwood said, “it’s just a statement of fact: you try to dump him and more than half this committee will leave and you’ll be high and dry without a quorum.”

“It depends on which states leave,” Ewan MacDonald MacDonald suggested calmly. “You can take bodies with you, Asa, but you can’t take delegate votes. And since we vote according to the number of votes allotted each state in the convention, I think you might find us able to nominate a candidate for Vice President
and
for President, without you and your friends. Maybe you’d better stick around.”

“There will be no attempt to dump Orrin Knox!” Asa Attwood said flatly, and far in the distance echo came: “Dump Orrin Knox! Dump Orrin Knox!”

“Mr. President,” Helen Rupert of Alabama said with a sudden impatient emphasis that brought quick attention, “can we stop this silly squabble and get on with it? I voted for Edward M. Jason for President in this committee four days ago, but I have no desire or intention to get rid of the man who is our nominee. We have a very distinguished nominee and I intend to support him wholeheartedly now the decision has been made—even more so, in view of recent tragic events. But we do need a candidate for Vice President, and we do need to hear from Secretary Knox. Do you, or does anyone, have any idea when he will come here, or whether he can come here?”