Preserve and Protect Page 11

  His visitor looked thoughtful.

  “No, I don’t think so. They’ve driven me into some unfortunate exaggerations over the years, too. It cuts both ways.”

  The Secretary gave him a quizzical glance, half-amused, half-disbelieving.

  “I never thought I’d hear you admit it.”

  “You probably never thought I’d be honest enough or perceptive enough to even think it,” Bob Leffingwell said dryly. “I got a pretty clear picture of what you think of me during the State Department nomination.”

  “Well,” Orrin said, “I believed it to be the correct one at the time. I don’t apologize for it. But people change—opinions change—certainties change. You’ve changed.” He frowned. “I like to think maybe I have, too, I don’t know.” The frown gave way to a wry amusement. “The mellow, aged-in-the-wood Orrin is not visible to a good many of my more violent critics, but he may be there, underneath it all.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bob agreed. “You’ve changed.”

  “Enough to support for President?” the Secretary asked quickly, and for several moments his visitor looked at him with a thorough, analytical gaze.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said slowly. “I really don’t know. Have I changed enough so that you want me to support you?”

  “You have politically,” Orrin said promptly, and Bob Leffingwell laughed.

  “Blunt, candid, I’ll-be-honest-if-it-kills-me Orrin Knox! How else have I changed—if at all?”

  It was the Secretary’s turn for an analytical gaze.

  “For one thing,” he said slowly, “we’re both a year and three months older, which should have some effect on a man even at our advanced ages. And for another, I think you have had occasion in the past few months to perceive the nature of some of your journalistic and academic supporters. And for a third, you had the guts to go all out for Harley, and that, in the context of your past life and record and in the context of those who helped to create your reputation, was a hell of a courageous thing to do. I admire you for it very much.”

  “I got your note at the hotel. I appreciated it—”

  “Even though you did think it was all politics.”

  “I thought there might be a little in it,” Bob Leffingwell confessed wryly, “but even so, I appreciated it. After all, you did put it in writing. Yes, I nominated Harley, bless his heart. Just out of sheer kindness, he did everything he could to salvage my career—”

  “And I did everything to destroy it,” Orrin said with calculated bluntness, since he thought he might as well test this new Leffingwell right now. His visitor did not take offense.

  “No,” he said mildly. “Most of that I did myself, when I led to the Foreign Relations Committee.”

  There was a silence in which they could hear a car come along the street; a sharp challenge from one of the security officers; a muffled conversation; the sound of the engine dwindling away. At last the Secretary spoke quietly.

  “A hard word to use about oneself. And a very honorable admission. I respect you for it.”

  “I don’t say it to everyone,” Bob Leffingwell said with a certain bleakness. “But some people have a right to hear it. You, perhaps, most of all.” He sighed deeply and stared down at his hands. When he spoke again his voice was very low. “You were right to defeat me … and that, too, you have a right to hear.”

  Again there was a silence, which his host took a long time to terminate.

  “I think I should be very lucky to have you support me,” he said at last. “And very honored, too. And that I would say, I think you can believe me, had you no political influence in the present situation at all.”

  “Thank you,” Bob Leffingwell said quietly. “I do believe you.… I suppose you wonder why I really came here tonight.”

  Orrin smiled and the tension eased a little.

  “I’ll admit I’m a little curious.”

  “Well, basically,” Bob said in a lighter tone, “I wanted to. But in addition to that, two ladies told me to.”

  “Oh?”

  “One was Helen-Anne—”

  “She would,” Orrin said, and they smiled at one another, probably the first genuine smile they had exchanged in several years.

  “And the other was Ceil Jason.”

  “Oh?” Orrin said softly. “Well, I’m damned.”

  “Yes,” Bob Leffingwell agreed. “So was I.”

  “Surely she didn’t tell you to support me—”

  “She told me to make up my own mind and have the courage to stick to it. Which, I suppose, amounted to the same thing.”

  “You know,” Orrin said, still in the same musing tone, “I think Ted is a luckier man than he may know. I think she must love him very much.”

  “Yes,” Bob Leffingwell agreed, “I think she must, though sure he wouldn’t see it that way. He’d probably think she was betraying him by trying to get him out of this.” An expression of distaste crossed his face. “More fool, he.”

  Orrin looked amused.

  “You don’t think too much of our great governor, do you?”

  “He’s an odd duck,” Bob said thoughtfully. “In some ways, a very brilliant man—mentally, and in his grasp of detail, and his decisiveness, and his general approach to things. I don’t think he has much heart, to use a tired cliché—there’s too much that’s cold and calculating underneath.”

  “But Ceil loves him.”

  “Apparently.”

  “So he must have something.”

  “Oh, he has. I’m not saying he hasn’t. He’s a most competent gentleman—and a most formidable opponent, I think, even now, even with the last five sorry days, even with his insane flirting with violence which drove me away, and has lost him a lot.”

  “He’ll regain it,” Orrin said tartly. “He’s regained it already. The public’s attention span is about ten minutes. They’re already forgetting the shabby side of it. Harley’s death has wiped out many things. Ted’s on the upswing again—formidable, as you say. So, are you going to support him, then, if you won’t support me? After all, he stands for negotiation and short-of-war and let’s-don’t-be-beastly-to-the-Reds. You like that, I take it.”

  For a moment Bob Leffingwell looked at him with a real hostility reviving in his eyes. Then he shrugged.

  “The Knox technique, I know it well—I ought to know it well. Challenge a man, throw ideas at him, knock him off balance, even insult him a little, see how he reacts, move from there.” He smiled, a trifle grimly. “You can’t do it to me anymore, Orrin: I’ve recovered. I recovered a little while ago, when I told you you were right to defeat me. From here on, I’m on the upswing too. Now, first of all, who said I wasn’t going to support you?”

  The Secretary gave him a shrewd look and chuckled.

  “You didn’t say you were.”

  “That’s right. And I won’t say it, either, at least not tonight. I may never say it. Then what?”

  “Then I should be quite disappointed. Because as I told you—after you started your upswing—I should be honored to have you, I can, however, get along without you.”

  “It’s mutual,” Bob Leffingwell said, and the hostility returned and for a moment they were enemies again until Orrin broke it with a smile.

  “Sure. It is. You couldn’t be more right. So starting from that, how do we proceed? Together?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Bob said slowly. “I honestly don’t. About my views, however—they can change too, you know. They’re no longer what you’re trying to say they are; and they aren’t with yours, either. There’s an in-between, you know. Everything doesn’t always have to be absolute.”

  “Granted,” the Secretary said. “Granted. It doesn’t have to be absolute until the moment comes when it’s fight or go under. Then it becomes absolute. And all this fuss—aside from those, and of course they do exist, who oppose all policy simply because they actually, cold-bloodedly wish to destroy the country—all this fuss is simply a debate over when the absolute moment come
s. Harley and I say—said—that it was at Point A, and you and Ted and others said it was at Point B. Ours was earlier than yours, and thereby hangs the argument.”

  “I’m not so sure that the genuine wreckers haven’t taken the argument over,” Bob Leffingwell said soberly. “They did at the convention, the way it ended was only a false lull, apparently—they did it tonight at the White House—who knows where and when they’ll attempt it again? Apparently it could be right here in Spring Valley. Who’s safe now, and where?”

  “Then our battle really is cut out for us, isn’t it?”

  Bob Leffingwell looked grave.

  “I think so.”

  “Then join me and help me fight it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then why did you come here?”

  “To begin thinking,” Bob said. He smiled, though this time it cost him an obvious effort. “And to find out if I could bear to talk to you.”

  The Secretary gave him a level glance.

  “You have.”

  “It hasn’t been a wasted evening,” his visitor said, rising. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “May I count on that?” Orrin asked, extending his hand.

  “You may count on that,” Bob Leffingwell said; responded with his quick, firm grip; turned to the door and was gone into the ominous night, escorted by a security man to his car, which started up quietly and rolled almost apologetically away into the silence of the sleeping neighborhood.

  “What did he say?” Beth inquired a few moments later when she called from the White House to say she thought she and Dolly would stay with Lucille, who was finally sleeping.

  “He said he thought the wreckers were taking over the country. He said he thought the ending of the convention was a false lull.”

  “I agree. Is he going to help you?”

  “He won’t say yet. I think so.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “Good night, my friend. Keep safe.”

  “Oh, I will,” he said. “They’ve got me under wraps tonight, all right. No wreckers here!”

  “And don’t make fun of them,” she said quietly. “They are genuinely terrifying people.”

  And so the master of “Salubria,” too, was beginning to regard them, as he reflected upon their heated conference earlier in the day, and its immediate result at the White House this evening.

  It had been the fashion of Walter’s world to regard Fred Van Ackerman as a boorish but occasionally useful demagogue of the irresponsible left; LeGage Shelby as a clever, ruthless Negro leader who might be teetering on the edge of fanaticism but could be trusted to have enough brains not to fall over; and Rufus Kleinfert as a clod. It had been comfortable and convenient for Walter and his friends to regard these three and their respective organizations—the so-called peace movement represented by Senator Van Ackerman’s Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce, the so-called civil rights movement represented by ’Gage Shelby’s Defenders of Equality for You, and the so-called superpatriotic movement represented by Rufus Kleinfert’s Kouncil on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism—as rather absurd but politically convenient manifestations that could be easily manipulated in the interests of certain candidates and certain causes.

  The members of Walter’s world, in short, had patronized COMFORT, DEFY and KEEP in exactly the fashion they patronized everybody else.

  They had patronized them thus, in fact, until the three organizations, having coalesced behind Governor Jason (which was all right), suddenly joined in the move to throw the convention into tension and turmoil (which was not all right). Then it finally dawned on Walter and his friends that COMFORT, DEFY and KEEP, like many another package of human dynamite they had played with loosely over the years, really did have a fuse and really could explode in sudden, mindless and terrifyingly uncontrollable ways.

  In the opening hours of the convention there had been many comfortable, self-satisfied broadcasts and analyses explaining to the public how it was that the idealists, fools, appeasers and Communists of COMFORT, the sick black racists of DEFY and the blind antediluvian isolationists of KEEP could logically unite behind the candidacy of the man Walter’s world wanted to see in the White House. But that had been when Walter’s world was still assuming that the three organizations and all who supported them throughout the country would be well-mannered and well-behaved—that they would throw the fear of God into Harley Hudson and Orrin Knox and the stupid conservatives who supported their stupid stand-firm policies—that they would not do anything to affront the vast middle reaches of the electorate upon whom the results of Presidential contests depend. It was assumed that they would threaten violence, disruption and chaos, but that they would not take themselves any more seriously than Walter and his friends did. It was assumed that they would not do anything which would really endanger the stability and security of the republic.

  Suddenly none of this was true anymore. Out of the convention political, nihilistic terror-for-terror’s sake had sprung to life. And suddenly, a little late—too late, perhaps—Walter’s world had become worried and to a considerable extent frightened of the monster whose parturition they had attended and encouraged with their bland editorials and commentaries, their smooth rationalizations, their suavely irresponsible justifications. They had presided step-by-step at the birth of terror—until suddenly terror was delivered full-grown and out of control.

  So now Walter’s world was uneasy and afraid, and so was Walter himself. Yet he had gone down to let Fred and ’Gage and Rufus into his house with some of the patronizing mood still lingering. However concerned some of his colleagues seemed to be, Walter felt that he could still handle it, and he felt that his columns were sufficiently strong and influential so that he still had some bargaining power.

  It had not taken long to disabuse him of that.

  “Well, Walter buddy,” Senator Van Ackerman had said with that fleering, unctuous familiarity he liked to use when he was driving someone to the wall, “I guess it’s about time for you to lay it on the line for the greatest governor any state ever had, isn’t it? Time to get in there and pitch, Walter boy.”

  “If you will come in and sit down,” Walter said, turning away with dignity, “perhaps we can discuss it.” And when they were in the living room, with a pointed courtesy, “Would you like a drink, Mr. Shelby? Mr. Kleinfert?”

  “I neffer drink,” Rufus Kleinfert said with a disapproving stare, his trace of accent at its stiffest and most pronounced. LeGage simply looked ominously impassive and shook his head without the courtesy of speech.

  “Guess that leaves me, Walter,” Fred Van Ackerman said, enjoying it. “I’ll have a vodka gimlet, thank you very much.”

  “I haven’t got any vodka,” Walter said, and took some small satisfaction from that though he suspected the satisfaction was rather pathetic and despised himself for it. “I can give you a gin and tonic.”

  “Period,” Fred said, with a cheerfully unpleasant smile, sitting down with the unerring instinct of a cat in Walter’s favorite chair.

  “Which I intend to have myself,” Walter said; rang for Roosevelt, gave the order and then took a seat somewhat uncomfortably on the sofa. “Now,” he said, spreading his hands on his knees in his characteristic gesture, “why are you here and what do you want?”

  “We’re here,” ’Gage Shelby said coldly, “because we’re going all out to get that nomination for Jason and we expect your help.”

  “Yess,” Rufus Kleinfert said softly. “We expekt it.”

  “What makes you think,” Walter asked with a coldness to match LeGage, a softness to match Rufus, “that my help will be withheld from the candidacy I deem best for the country? Who launched that candidacy in the first place? I did, with my speech in Washington three months ago. What makes you think it is necessary for you three to come to me like a delegation from the Mafia and try to put pressure on me? Who do you think,” he said, even more coldly and softly, “you are?”

  “Temper, Walter buddy, tem
per!” Fred Van Ackerman said with his relishing, insincere humor, but neither of his companions looked at all amused.

  “Unless that man is nominated,” LeGage Shelby said somberly, “there’s going to be blood in this God-damned worthless country. I’m telling you that for a fact. There’s going to be blood.”

  “There already has been blood,” Walter snapped. “Crystal Knox’s blood, at the convention, and it cost him the nomination then, you and your damned vicious interlopers! You destroyed his chances once, what are you going to do, destroy them again?”

  “Now, that’s exactly—” ’Gage Shelby began, leaping up in some obscure, inarticulate excitement of rage, “that’s exactly what—what—that’s exactly what you white bastards always try to do, you always try to shut us off, you always try to keep us quiet, you always—you always—”

  “Sit down,” Walter said in an icy tone, “and be quiet! I am not trying to do anything but inject a little sanity into your heads. Violence doesn’t work in America—”

  “And don’t give me any of your pious, pompous lectures about violence!” ’Gage shouted, while Fred studied him with a placid interest and Rufus Kleinfert sat, as always, like a large wax lump. “Don’t try to tell me, white man! Your days are numbered in this God-damned worthless country—”

  “As worthless as you make it,” Walter snapped, trembling with rage himself but trying hard to hide it and succeeding fairly well. “Now, sit down or get out of my house.”

  For a long moment LeGage stared at him like some quivering panther. Before the moment could explode into some further outrage whose nature no one could foresee, Senator Van Ackerman spoke.

  “Sit down, boy,” he said with a lazy, deliberate brutality. “Just sit down and stop spilling those grits and chitterlings all over the place.”

  “You!” ’Gage cried, diverted and if possible even more infuriated. “You, you empty bastard! I told you never to ‘boy’ me again! You hear?” he demanded, so angry he was almost crying. “You hear, you hear?”