Preserve and Protect Read online

  Master? No man was ever really master of this house for long. Too many echoes were in the air, too many predecessors looked over his shoulder, too many past decisions kept him company as he faced his dreadful responsibilities. Now and again he might assert himself, use the fearful power that was his to change or initiate events. But before long events regained control and he found he was merely their instrument. He found he must start over, or change course, or do something else than he had at first believed he should—and could.

  Her husband’s predecessor had set in motion certain things: who knew how he would have finished them? Her husband had to decide, bound by what his predecessor had already done. Her husband had set in motion certain things: who knew how he would have finished them? His successor would have to decide, bound by what her husband had already done. Certain long-range tendencies appeared in the lives of nations, came to fruition, ran their course, subsided. It did not matter a great deal who attempted to change them along the way: they began, had their time, passed. Presidents, potentates, chairmen of “peoples’ republics,” possessed only the option to decide a few details; and while details sometimes could be fearfully important, the basic river of history flowed on between the banks predestined by the shortcomings of human nature, and would not be deflected.

  Thus, no matter who had been in the White House, America would have opposed the imperialistic aggressions of Communism—the sheer instinct of national survival, as long as it lasted, would have determined that. It might have been done with more skill in this instance, less grace in that, but it would have been done, and with just about the same blundering, dogged determination. Even Governor Jason, had he ever the chance, would proceed along basically the same lines. Even Governor Jason, the hated and despised, whom she now, in some blind, irrational way that had no foundation in fact so far as she knew, considered responsible for her husband’s death.

  Ted Jason and all his ambitious, ruthless schemes … her husband had been right to keep him off the ticket, right to thwart his ambitions, right to shut him out of government. He was a bad, bad man and he had helped to kill Harley.

  He had helped to kill Harley.

  And suddenly she began to cry as she had not cried before, silent, wracking, terrible; knowing, in some dimly grasped way that she had hardly time or ability to understand, in the depths of grief to which she now descended, that when it was over she would do what she could to assure that everything would be the way Harley wanted it.

  Harley Hudson might be gone but Lucille Hudson was still here; and even as silent weeping gave way to strangled, grotesque, horrible sounds and she bit at a pillow to try to keep them muffled, she understood that she was not going back to Grand Rapids. She was going to stay right here and continue to be a part of Washington for his sake, in any way she could.

  “Secretary Knox!” the photographers cried. “Secretary and Mrs. Knox—Senator—could we have you over here, please? Would you just come over this way a little, please? Please, Mr. Secretary!”

  “Do you mind?” he murmured, looking down at Beth: comfortable, solid, unpretentious, somewhat windblown, obviously tired, but with her keen eyes amused as they so often were by the imperatives of prominence.

  “Have I ever?” she inquired with a smile, and suddenly he knew, as he always did when she was with him, that everything was going to be all right.

  “No,” he said with an answering smile that the Post’s photographer captured, but which was not used. (“It makes the bastard look too likable!” the general director protested with a wry chuckle, tossing it into the discard basket and substituting one that made him look worried, disheveled and tense.)

  “Very well,” she said. “Strike a pose, Senator.”

  And so they did, and were photographed standing near the terminal entrance. CANDIDATE AND WIFE, said Life in its next issue. THE EVER-HOPEFULS, said Look.

  In the State Department limousine, as the driver knifed it skillfully through the home-going Sunday traffic in the softly dying twilight, they were recognized twice and each time the neighboring car almost went off the road. After that they sat back as far as they could and at first were silent. But when they went over the bridge and entered the city, she gave him a thoughtful look and asked with a smile,

  “How are you bearing up, Mr. Secretary? All right?”

  “I’m managing,” he said. She squeezed his hand.

  “That’s good. I’d hate to think you were being bothered by anything.”

  “It is damned annoying—” he began with an explosive emphasis and then stopped with a sudden wry grin. “Hank,” he said, employing the nickname he had first begun to use years ago at the University of Illinois when she was Elizabeth Henry, “this is going to build up into the damnedest foofooraw you ever saw.”

  “Considering the number of foofooraws you’ve been in,” she said, “I find it hard to believe that this is going to be the damnedest. However, what can I do to help even it up?”

  “Just stand by me,” he said, the grin fading. “I expect I’m going to need it now more than I ever have.”

  “There’s great doubt as to whether I will,” she said solemnly. “But perhaps if you promise me a job in your new Administration—”

  “All right, all right,” he said relaxing into his first moment of genuine amusement since Senator Warren Strickland had called him in Carmel with the news of Harley’s death. “So I’m sounding stuffy and pompous. Maybe it won’t be as bad as that. But it’s going to be a hell of a fight. And, Hank”—and again a somber expression touched his face—“I’m getting a little tired of fighting.”

  “Well, I’m not,” she said. “Four days at Esmé’s place were just what I needed. Particularly since she called this morning and wished you luck.”

  “She did?” he asked in genuine surprise, “That I don’t believe.”

  She chuckled.

  “Neither did I. But it was a nice gesture. She was very vague about Ted when I asked her. I gathered she hadn’t been able to reach him. Nor has anyone else.”

  “He seems to be in touch with the press,” Orrin said dryly. “How are the kids?”

  “Feeling better. Crystal’s coming along fine and I think Hal has decided to remain with the human race, after all. The doctors say there can be another baby—”

  “No, really?” he asked delightedly.

  She nodded and squeezed his hand again.

  “I thought that might put a spark back in you, Grandpa. Yes, it’s apparently going to be all right, so everybody’s feeling much better. Including Stanley, whom I left in charge. He really doesn’t want to fight any more.”

  He nodded.

  “I can’t blame him.”

  “So now you need a new campaign manager.”

  “Any ideas?”

  She gave him a quick glance.

  “The same one you have, I expect.”

  “I’m not sure I want him,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure it’s going to be conducted in quite the sort of atmosphere in which—”

  But even as he spoke the limousine turned and moved into Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House, and at once they became aware of police, strobe lights, television cameras, shouts and cries, a mass of shifting, surging people. As they came closer they could see that its focus was a long line of picketers, young, old, white, black, male, female, bearded, non-bearded, clean, filthy, happily intermingled and swaying in a stomping conga formation along the iron railings in front of the mansion.

  Its members carried torches and banners which they displayed eagerly for the encouraging cameras—“GOODBYE, HARLEY, NO MORE WAR!… COMFORT SAYS: NOW’S THE TIME TO STOP THE CRIME!… KEEP DEMANDS AN IMMEDIATE END TO OVERSEAS ENTANGLEMENTS!… END THE WHITE MAN’S WAR!—DEFY.…YOU’RE NEXT, ORRIN—ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO!”

  And in measured cadence there came clearly through the soft night air the mocking, triumphant chant:

  Air Force One,

  What have you done?

  Set us free,r />
  Tee hee hee!

  “My God,” he said with a disgust so deep he had not known it was still there after all these years of shabby guttersnipe outburst in America, “is there no decency left in this land? Driver! Take us into the White House!”

  “Mr. Secretary—” the driver began in alarm, and Beth said, “Orrin!”

  But his face set in an implacable mask and he repeated angrily, “Take us on in. Run them down if they don’t give way!”

  But fortunately for all concerned, the White House police had seen them coming, recognized the car, and were already deployed in a flying wedge that opened a path to the West Gate. Through this the limousine moved swiftly, but not before others recognized them too. Stones, eggs, torches slammed against the car, an angry animal howl followed them up the drive. As they stopped beneath the portico, the chanting line converged into a mass that shoved and pushed against the railings. Wild obscenities shattered the placid evening of Pennsylvania Avenue; not for the first time nor the last, but probably never before in such a context.

  As they looked back from the top of the steps they could see police deployed along the inside of the fence; see the first clouds of riot gas begin to boil; hear a single, shattering gunshot, the start and finish of a scream.

  Dolly Munson met them at the door, her eyes wide with trouble and concern.

  “Get inside,” she said, pulling them in. “For God’s sake, get inside!” The dream-city and the real city had come together, and the deceptively peaceful mood, which in Washington is never really very peaceful underneath, was peaceful no more.

  5

  Two hours later in Spring Valley—SECRETARY KNOX BESIEGED IN WHITE HOUSE, ESCAPES THROUGH UNDERGROUND PASSAGE TO EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING, the early editions said. NEGRO DEMONSTRATOR KILLED IN ANTIWAR PROTEST—his first act was to mix himself a strong Scotch and soda and take it into the den. He had left Beth at the mansion, helping Dolly and the White House physician calm a Lucille Hudson driven almost hysterical by the noise outside. Six State Department security men had come with him and were now staked out discreetly among the trees and bushes. The neighborhood was silent and apparently deserted as midnight neared, but for all practical purposes he was besieged in his own home, too.

  He took a deep breath and a deep swallow and put his head back against the well-worn top of the rocker. There he sat for what seemed to him a long time, hardly moving, hardly thinking—at least, not coherently, though a thousand things raced back and forth inside his head. None seemed to make much sense, except that if there had ever been any doubt that he would continue to seek the nomination, the riot had ended it forever. Those who had conceived the insane idea that such tactics might intimidate Orrin Knox did not know Orrin Knox. Yet why did anyone not know Orrin Knox? He had been around long enough.

  It was apparent, however, that this would be a dangerous and possibly bloody business. The violence that had disgraced the convention had not died after all: it had only been sleeping for the past four days.

  The employment of violence as a political weapon had never been fashionable in America, but increasingly in these last few hectic years the alien idea had been imported that the way to conduct the American democracy was with guns, riots, destruction, assassination. Rioting was no longer the happy, haphazard, idiot-child pastime of looting and burning that had characterized the middle stages of the civil rights campaign. Now it was cold-blooded, deliberate, engaged in by whites and blacks integrated at last in sickness and hatred, organized to capture the mastery of public opinion and the intimidation and downfall of government. Riots now were scientific, purposeful, political—and to the decent and the stable they were terrifying, because they harnessed the animal that crawls from the gutter to the animal that conspires in clandestine rooms.

  Of course the pretended purposes were still all noble. But the only real purpose was to destroy the Republic, and finally America’s enemies had devised a technique that could really, conceivably, do it. The idea had never succeeded before because those who spawned it had always been alien. Now they had persuaded native-born to do it for them.

  The two cities were one and might never be separate again.

  He thought of Lucille Hudson, widowed at the White House in an accident whose true causes nobody yet knew or would probably ever know; he thought of Beth, who could be widowed too; of Crystal and Hal, who had already suffered from the beast let loose; of all the decent ordinary citizens, unprepared for such tactics of internal self-destruction and too basically fair and tolerant to respond in kind. And he wondered what would happen to America, and to him, and to all he treasured and had worked so long and hard to maintain. And once again there came into his mind the thought that had struck him a year ago on the night he had been going through such mental tortures over the offer of Harley’s predecessor to back him for President if he would only abandon his opposition to Bob Leffingwell’s nomination to be Secretary of State.

  He had been wandering beneath the Capitol, on the sloping lawn that leads down from the west front to the Mall, the city, and the White House beyond that he had wanted so much—still wanted so much.

  He had turned and faced the magnificent old jumble.

  The great dome had loomed above him against the deepening sky, shimmering, perfect, white and pure, over the city, over the nation, over the world. On the Senate side the flag slapped lazily in the gentle breeze. Utter peace, utter serenity, lay upon the Hill.

  Surprising and sudden, tears came into his eyes.

  O America, he thought, and it was like a crying in his heart: O America! Why do you suffer us your people, who are such fools, and what have we done to deserve you?

  Then he had shaken his head with a quick, impatient movement and gone back up the long flight of steps to defeat Robert A. Leffingwell.…

  And O America! he thought now, and again it was a crying in his heart: O my country! What will become of you in these days when your children hate one another and turn without tolerance and without compassion to rend themselves and you in their insane stupidity and spite?

  He realized that tears were in his eyes on this occasion too, even as he realized that one of the security men outside was rapping on the kitchen door with the agreed three knocks. He rose somewhat unsteadily and went to answer. For several moments he found it difficult to focus on the visitor who stepped forward, closing the door quickly behind him.

  “Oh,” he said finally. “It’s you. How ironic. I was just thinking of that night—I was just thinking of the night I stood on the lawn below the west front—and looked at the Capitol—and thought about America—and went back in the chamber—and beat you.”

  “That was quite a night,” Bob Leffingwell said softly; and held out his hand. “How are you, Orrin?”

  “A little shaky, I’m afraid,” the Secretary said, with a laugh that indicated as much; and then returned his visitor’s firm grip. “I’m glad to see you, Bob. I’ve been hoping we could meet soon. Come on in the library. I think”—and again he uttered a rather unsteady little laugh—“I think we’re relatively safe here. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “What are you having?” Bob Leffingwell asked. “Scotch? I’ll join you.”

  “Good,” Orrin said. “Sit down, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Left alone in a house to which he had never been invited as guest in all the years of their frequent contention, Bob Leffingwell studied it thoughtfully. It looked as he had known it would: solid, erudite, lived-in, comfortable—safe. But nothing was safe on this night, or perhaps ever again in America. He shivered and for a moment he, too, was lost in thought, called back abruptly by his host’s return.

  Orrin handed him a glass, picked up his own, sat again in the rocker by the empty fireplace.

  “Did you come by the White House?”

  “Yes, it’s quiet, now. Some debris in the gutters, all the floodlights on, eight or ten cops still on duty along the fence, but otherwise calm. The Avenue’s quiet, nobody on t
he Lafayette Park side. I guess they’ve had their fun for the night.”

  A wry expression touched the Secretary’s face.

  “Oh, the fun’s just beginning. It isn’t every day you run to ground a Secretary of State and a candidate for President. I’m sure we’ll be hearing for the rest of the campaign how I scuttled out with my tail between my legs. But of course it would have been foolhardy to go out the front way.”

  “Foolhardy to go in,” Bob Leffingwell suggested with a smile. “But typical.”

  “I suddenly got awfully fed up.…Your health.”

  “Yours too,” Bob Leffingwell said, and found somewhat to his surprise that he really meant it.

  For a moment they drank in silence. The Secretary broke it in a thoughtful tone.

  “I’ve just been sitting here wondering where this country’s going.”

  “Yes,” Bob said, his face suddenly grim. “You’re not the only one.”

  “We’ve managed to survive an awful lot of this mindless irresponsibility in recent years, but there’s an extra viciousness to it now. For the first time in all my years in public life, I feel our enemies may really have us by the throat. And I’ve been thinking whether maybe I’m to blame, and whether I ought not to get out.”

  “You weren’t to blame at the convention,” Bob Leffingwell said. “You weren’t to blame tonight. And you won’t get out.”

  “No,” Orrin said slowly, “I won’t. But I really wonder how much blame I bear for this. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough to see the other point of view. Maybe I’ve become as rigid and arbitrary as the professional liberals are. It’s an easy, smug, intolerant state of mind to fall into. Maybe they’ve driven me to it in self-defense … or maybe I’m just rationalizing.”