Authors: Gore Vidal
Peter was struck by the boldness, not to mention aptness, of the lie. How could he now, once again with Diana, acknowledge that she had always preferred Clay to him and that only after Clay had dropped her did she return to him? Meanwhile Clay had moved on to the heiress that everyone knew he would need to finance his rise once he was rid at last of Blaise, the surrogate father and paymaster and, if Enid was to be believed, lover. This last, if true, must have been a distasteful business to Clay, but business was business.
Clay picked up a folder. “Your old friend Billy Thorne’s a wonderful writer. He’s been …”
“Writing a book for you.”
“Well, that’s one way of looking at it, though we’re supposed to tell everyone how I slaved over the text, plumbing the depths of our political system. Unfortunately, he couldn’t finish my testament.”
“Why not?”
“He’s been giving secret testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He’s naming names. Thousands of names. He’s now home—free. But I can’t have an ex-communist, no matter how patriotic, writing … I mean doing research for me. Can I?”
“Why not?” Peter shrugged. “It’s very much the thing nowadays. Look at Whittaker Chambers.”
“I’ve got someone else. But Billy was certainly bright. I don’t think Diana ever appreciated him.”
“Well, he’s found a home at the CIA.”
Clay affected puzzlement. “He’s at the Treasury, isn’t he? When he’s not writing for the
Wall Street Journal
.”
“That’s the cover story.”
Clay smiled: the old charm had been polished to high gloss. “Better cool it, Peter. That’s becoming too much your style. Conspiracies everywhere. You’re getting like poor old Joe McCarthy.”
This was Peter’s lead. “But there
are
conspiracies. Thousands of them. Everywhere. Particularly in Washington. Look at you. Conspiring to be a senator. Then president. You never stop … whispering to this one and that one.”
“I’m not so partial,” said Clay easily, “to that word ‘whispering.’ I tend to speak out. The way I did in the Old House Caucus Room the other day. Everything’s in the open.” The blue eyes turned unblinkingly on Peter, who turned away. Clay was uncommonly hard but then so was he himself, at least when engaged in such work as this.
“But you lied to the press, once again, when you said that you were in the race because Burden wasn’t going to run, due to … what was it? Ill health?”
Clay’s smile was close to a baring of teeth. “That’s the truth. I also said if he wanted to run again I’d pull out, of course.”
“But has
he
pulled out?”
Clay looked at his watch. “He’ll have a statement by five o’clock. In time for tomorrow morning’s papers. I guess we got our wires crossed the other day. I must have misunderstood him. Anyway, we had a nice meeting, yesterday. After all, I do owe him everything, practically.”
“You owe him at least whatever it is that you don’t owe my father.”
Clay laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
Peter’s face was hot. Mustn’t get angry. Easy does it. “No. You’ve certainly given Father a great deal of pleasure. You and … your career. I’ve given him none and nothing for nothing is the law of relationships while something for something is the absolute law.”
Clay chose to bypass this potentially dangerous line of argument. “What did you mean when you said I’d lied to the press ‘once again’?”
“There it is, your truly great lie.” Peter pointed to the silhouetted man carrying a marine from a fiery inferno.
Clay laughed. “Well, to start with, that’s not me, that’s Audie Murphy!”
Peter opened his briefcase and removed the photograph that he’d got from United Press. “Here’s a new print from the original negative. I got it from the photographer who was there—when you were not there.”
Clay took the photograph; he was still smiling. “The problem is,” he finally said, “you can’t really tell who it is.”
“Luckily for you.”
“What are you up to?” The smile was gone. He dropped the photo to the floor, to show he was done with it. But Peter retrieved the print and put it back in his briefcase.
“I want you to ring Burden and tell him he won’t have to make any statement, that you’ve changed your mind about running.”
“No. I’m going for it. So …” A long pause. Then, Clay picked up
Fire over Luzon
by the GI’s Homer. He opened to several pages of glossy stills from the Lingayen Gulf airfield. “How do you explain these? Pictures of me at the airfield. Me with the wounded. Me with a Jap bomb going off. All taken that same day.”
“Taken the
next
day. Someone has even airbrushed out your bandaged foot.” Peter shut the book. “I’ve found your doctor. I’ve found the photographer. I’ve unmasked
your
conspiracy.” Peter smiled at his own neatness. “Why don’t you just wait another two years as originally planned? I’m sure Blaise isn’t in all that much of a rush. He’s certainly enjoying things the way they are, now that Enid’s dead.”
Clay sat back in his chair, legs stretched out. He yawned. Then he said, “You know about Ed Nillson?”
“Yes. I also know he’s not eager to be mixed up in this.”
“He has no choice if Burden runs. I won’t give him any choice. I won’t give either of them any choice.” Clay stared at the photograph of himself and Truman. “Why now and not in two years? Because after Truman we’re going to have at least eight years of a Republican president. Probably Eisenhower or MacArthur. Then a Democrat. Someone
new. Born in this century, not one of these old folks, these holdovers from the coach-and-buggy era. It’s all going to change. Well, for me to be ready in 1960, I’ll need at least eight years of national exposure in the Senate. So that’s what I mean to have.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why is all this necessary? Why must
you
be president?”
“Some people are meant to be. Some are not. Obviously you’re not.”
“Obviously. It’s the last thing I’d ever want. My sort of work is more apt to be useful.”
“Like Dr. Schweitzer in the African jungle?” Clay was on his feet. He stretched. For an instant, Peter thought that Clay had actually arched his back. “Everything’s now in order for me to start the long march. There’s also no one else, which is a help.”
“Hubert Humphrey?”
“Too far to the left. The South won’t take him.”
“Lyndon Johnson?”
“Texas? A bribe-taker? Never.”
“Your fellow congressman Jack Kennedy? His father can outspend my father any day.”
“He’ll be dead by 1960. He’s got no adrenal function. ‘Yellow Jack,’ they call him. Just look at him. He’s a skeleton. No, the field is clear for me.”
“Ten years is a long time to keep any field clear.”
“I know. That’s why I’ve got a lot to do. That’s why I suggest you … lay off.”
Peter rose. “Perhaps you’ll rethink your position once I write about what really happened at the Lingayen Gulf airfield.”
“Why bother? Burden’s taking himself out of the race.”
“But if he doesn’t?”
“Ed Nillson will suddenly be a very famous man and Burden may go to jail.”
“So what about you? The phony hero. The invention of Harold Griffiths.”
“And of your father. It takes at least two to give birth to a national
hero.” Clay was unexpectedly droll. “I am one and there’s nothing you can do to change that.”
“Let’s see what I can do.”
“Do you really want to never see your father again?”
Peter laughed. “What a weird thing to say! I hardly see him now. Anyway, he’s yours. A present from me to you. A funeral present, you might say. From Enid’s funeral. After all, it took the two of you to give birth to that.”
Peter left Clay standing in the middle of his office, still smiling.
Billy Thorne was seated at the partners’ desk.
“Aeneas had to go up to the Hill, so I said I’d wait for you here.”
“Reading our next issue.”
“Well, trying to.”
Peter sat opposite Billy, who did not move. “Actually, I came to see Diana but apparently she’s in Rock Creek Park, commiserating with her father. So I certainly don’t want to go there. But I have some business with her. Marital nonsense …”
“She’s commiserating?”
“Yes. He’s pulled out of the race. An hour ago. It’ll be on the news.”
Peter rang the Burden Day house. A weary Diana answered. “Yes,” she said. “It’s all over. The statement’s gone to the press.”
“But I told him he wouldn’t have to. That …” Peter looked straight across the desk into the ill-matching eyes of Billy Thorne. “That it wouldn’t be necessary. That Clay was bound to change his mind.”
“Mr. Nillson came by after lunch. He said the only way to keep things quiet was to …”
Then Peter interrupted her. “Billy Thorne’s in the office.”
“How lucky for you,” she said.
Billy handed Peter an envelope. “Tell her I’m giving her this joint insurance policy we had. There were two of them. I’m keeping one. I’m giving her the other.”
Peter said, “I’ll tell her.” Then into the receiver he said, “I’ll be
working late.” He hung up; turned to Billy. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No.” Billy pulled himself to his feet. “I assume you won’t be blackmailing Clay now.”
A spasm of anger caused Peter to shudder. “Surely that’s more Clay’s line of work. And yours.”
“Not according to Clay. We were going to touch on it in his book, in a general sort of way. But then I had to quit, as you know. We had no choice after my testimony to the House committee.” Billy paused at the door. “Do you still have that coat of mine?”
Peter indicated a closet. Billy retrieved his coat as well as a Borsalino hat. “Don’t forget to give that insurance policy to Diana.”
“I won’t. Goodbye.”
“By the way, Clay’s got a new writer, a really good one, I think.”
Peter prayed Billy would go, quickly. “Only the best for Clay.”
“I guess you don’t know yet who it is.” Billy was most pleased with himself. “It’s Aeneas Duncan.” Then Billy was gone. Peter continued to stare, as if in total concentration, at a copy of the Mundt-Nixon bill, calling for the sequestration of all American communists in concentration camps as yet unbuilt.
Finally, Peter switched on his intercom. The secretary answered. “Yes, Mr. Sanford?”
“Please get me Mrs. Schiff. At the New York
Post
. I gave you her number the other day.” He switched off the intercom, and began to make notes on a yellow pad of legal paper, becoming more and more relaxed. There was something very satisfying—even ennobling—about writing the political obituary of Clay Overbury.
Aeneas was not in the least defensive. “I want to go to work in the engine room for a while. When Clay’s elected to the Senate, he’ll be the leading politician of his generation, which means …” Aeneas blew
a perfect smoke ring. “It’s your fault, really. Always quoting Henry Adams and his friends until I started to find attractive what they found irresistible. Creating a president by educating a politician.”
“Hardly possible in the case of a ‘villain.’ ”
“Don’t exaggerate. By an accident of time and place, Clay is simply force concentrated and personified.”
“Henry Adams would have demanded more.”
“Would he? I thought that the one lesson you wise men of the republic had learned was how nothing matters in the end except force and energy.”
“You astonish me,” was the best that Peter could do. Aeneas was seated in his old place at the partners’ desk. He had come back to finish out the month of June; then he would return to New York for good, with a job in publishing. Peter already missed him. But Clay—the wrecker, as Peter now thought of him—had done his work yet again.
“What will you write that anyone will believe?” Peter’s story was due to appear in the New York
Post
on Monday the 26th of June. It was now Sunday and Peter and Aeneas were putting together the next issue.
“Well, this is a vision for America, not the story of what a politician must say and do to get elected.” Aeneas twirled his wedding band. “There won’t be much of anything personal as I see the book.”
“Just a program?”
“Or another way of looking at things. Pretty much what we’ve been trying to do here.”
“Clay can’t have another way of looking at things that’s at all different from what the Gallup Poll says is how the American people look at things as of that morning.”
“We’ll see. Billy actually did a great deal of good work. I’m keeping a lot of it. We publish in October. When do you?” Aeneas stared at him through cigarette smoke.
“Monday. After that, I don’t see how …”
But Monday brought its own surprise. On Sunday, the army of communist North Korea invaded South Korea, whose army promptly
fled and whose capital, Seoul, was soon in enemy hands, causing its American-sponsored dictator, Syngman Rhee, to withdraw to the relative safety of Taegu.
Peter found it unnerving to have Aeneas sitting opposite him just as his own story about Clay was breaking. Diana had stayed the weekend at Rock Creek Park with her father while Aeneas was living at the Negro boardinghouse down the street, the only place, he maintained, where one could get a decent meal in Washington.
Peter was brought the New York
Post
. “Here it is!” The young man beamed at both of them, unaware that Aeneas was now in the enemy camp if not yet a spy in theirs.
Aeneas affected to be busy with a manuscript from a young historian in Madison, Wisconsin, while Peter absorbed the shock that his story was not on the front page, crowded out by dark war headlines. Ninety thousand North Korean troops had crossed the thirty-eighth parallel, the dividing line between the Red dictatorship to the north and the free world of the south, under the benign protection of General MacArthur at Tokyo.
Peter swiftly read what little Korean news there was. The President had returned from Independence, Missouri, and was now at Blair House (the White House was undergoing repairs). The National Security Council was meeting. The United Nations had been advised. It was expected that the President would go before Congress and ask for a declaration of war. Meanwhile …