Preserve and Protect Read online

  “That is a very foolish remark,” the French Ambassador observed calmly. “No one wants the United States destroyed. We just want it to abide by recognized rules of international behavior. However,” he added, forestalling Lafe’s sarcastic rejoinder, “it does seem that there are very definite threats to your internal stability lately—a progressive deterioration, if you like, which should be checked.”

  “And when we check it, what will the world say?” Cullee demanded, “‘Suppressing legitimate protest’ … ‘Dictatorial methods’ … ‘Shooting down innocent blacks?’” He made a sound of deep repugnance. “Innocent blacks, for God’s sake! ’Gage Shelby and his pack of anarchists!”

  “First came the Fatuous Fifties,” Lafe said slowly. “And then came the Sick Sixties … And out of them came the Savage Seventies … and out of them—where’s it going to stop, Claude? Tell us, Raoul. Enlighten us, K.K. What’s at the end of this endless unraveling of law and order and a stable society? Anything at all?”

  For a moment, confronted so nakedly with the outlines and implications of the world they lived in, no one said anything, while all around the spokesmen of the mutually hostile races of man gossiped and chattered and exchanged their worried witticisms on the steady decline of a civilization they seemed unable either to strengthen or save. Then the British Ambassador returned to the only safety diplomats know, which is, One Thing At A Time—Today’s Issue Today—and, Let Tomorrow Take Care Of Itself.

  “Some of us, you know,” he said softly, “regard the recent actions of the United States as contributory in major degree to just the endless unraveling you talk about. My government—”

  “Your government,” Lafe snapped, “fights at our side in Gorotoland, endorses our position in Panama, and is selling arms and supplies briskly to our enemies in both countries. Who is unraveling what, may I ask?”

  “Nonetheless,” Lord Maudulayne said stubbornly, “we do not accept the principle that the United States can unilaterally interfere with our shipping and our trade.”

  “You assume, you see,” the French Ambassador pointed out dryly, “that there was ever a skein of consistency—unless it be consistent inconsistency—in British policy. You assume that integrity is a desirable element in international affairs. How naïve!”

  “Yes, we know,” Cullee agreed. “France has shown us that.”

  “The alternative, of course,” Lord Maudulayne said, “is to cut off our trade, destroy our economy, impoverish us and make us your international ward. Would you prefer that?”

  “We would prefer,” Lafe said, “that you try something besides always trading with those who have as their goal our destruction—and your own destruction. You talk about the United States being chained to old policies and old habits! The rest of you are just as chained to them, and the results are just as fatal to any real solution of the world’s difficulties. London still operates on the old imperial philosophy of trade-with-anybody, no matter what he stands for, even if he wants to destroy you. That worked when Britain was big enough so that it didn’t matter a damn what your customers thought, because you were so powerful nobody could destroy you. But, my friend, you aren’t that powerful now. Now it really does matter if your customers’ ultimate aim is to destroy you, because now they have the capability to do it—and you have no capability to stop them. As witness Hong Kong and the pathetic history of ‘diplomatic relations with Red China’ and a few other adventures based on the old imperial reflex about trade. It’s time you learned, one would think.”

  “The Preaching American!” Raoul Barre said ironically. “The latest development in the never-ceasing pattern of surprises that comes to us from across the Atlantic! If by ‘learning’ you mean we should all tie ourselves to you with no more independence of action or thought for ourselves, you know very well what our two governments think of that.”

  “And mine,” Krishna Khaleel volunteered quickly. “But, my dear friends, my dear friends!” he added with a nervous brightness. “Such acerbity of discussion does not advance world harmony, does it? It only aggravates, disrupts, divides. Surely we must not indulge in such carping differences, surely we must stand together!”

  “Stand together for what?” Cullee asked moodily. “That’s the question we ask. What’s the good of standing together if it isn’t for something?”

  “We intend to stand together, ourselves, for the principles of free trade and free navigation,” Claude Maudulayne said with an affronted coolness, “and I think we had best move on, now, and discuss it with those—with the many—who see it as we do.”

  “Your new chum Tashikov is over by the bar,” Senator Smith told him, gesturing down the long room to the end overlooking the East River, where the chunky little figure of the Soviet Ambassador could be discerned surrounded by a dozen gorgeous robes out of Africa. “We shall veto your joint resolution, of course, and you might as well spread the word that there is no point in taking it to the Assembly. We will not be bound.”

  “We think you are making a great mistake,” Lord Maudulayne observed.

  “We think we are in good company,” Cullee Hamilton replied evenly.

  When they were alone again, in a conspicuous isolation that no one else attempted to interrupt as the hour grew closer to the time the Security Council was to meet and take up “The Matter of Increased United States Aggression in Africa and Central America,” the Americans for a few moments said little. Lafe stared with a steady glance, which met many eyes and made them drop, around the crowded room. Cullee looked down thoughtfully upon the plaza and the noisy groups of tourists who shuffled slowly along and disappeared through the great bronze doors below. Finally he opened one enormous black hand and closed it again slowly into a tight, unyielding fist.

  “Looks like we’re in for an unpleasant afternoon,” he remarked. “But no more than others we’ve survived, I guess. The Speaker—the President—apparently isn’t going to give an inch.”

  “And thank God for it.”

  Cullee smiled.

  “He sounded very Presidential when he called us a little while ago, didn’t he? It’s amazing how quickly they slip into it.”

  “It’s one job where you just haven’t got time to think,” Lafe agreed. “You’ve got to be on top of it the minute you’re in there.”

  “The press is certainly having a field day with his trip from Reno,” Cullee observed. “But I think he was wise to keep it secret.” He sighed. “God knows we couldn’t stand another thing like Harley, right now.”

  “No,” Lafe agreed somberly, “we could not. In fact, I don’t know just how much we can stand of any other sort of thing either. That damned White House riot, and those murderous fools out there in the street right now … Did they give you any trouble when you came in?”

  Cullee’s expression became somber.

  “My wife did, screaming and shouting like a little—”

  “Is she still with LeGage?” Lafe asked in surprise.

  “Yes,” Cullee said. “That little Sue-Dan, I guess she’s old ’Gage’s secretary and companion and bottle washer and bed-maker and bed-sharer, way it looks to me. But I don’t care!” he exclaimed with a sudden bitter anger, smashing his huge fist into the palm of his other hand. “I don’t care two cents for that little tramp! I’m getting that divorce as soon as I win my Senate seat in California.”

  “And are you going to?” Lafe asked, drawing Cullee away from a topic that always upset him deeply, so much was he still in love with the fox-faced little virago who had left him six months ago because he wasn’t militant enough.

  “It looks good,” Cullee said. “Better if Orrin gets the nomination, but good either way, I think. In spite of all the kooks in California, and a couple of the major non-newspapers out there, and all.”

  “There’s going to be one hell of a fight in the National Committee,” Lafe said thoughtfully, giving an absent-minded nod to the Ambassador of the Seychelles who was just passing with the Special Envoy of The Free Sci
llys Liberation Movement.

  “There is that,” Cullee agreed. “The whole world’s going to try to mix into that one. But I still think Orrin can swing it.”

  “I think Orrin’s got to swing it,” Lafe said. “After the performance Ted put on at the convention, I can see him even less than I did before. I’m very, very dubious that he should ever be the man for the White House. Particularly since he seems to be playing right along with all the violent elements now, just as he was a week ago. You’d think he’d have learned, but you saw the statement he issued after the White House riot. Two mild little sentences, going both ways: ‘All Americans concerned with their country’s welfare must deplore acts of violence. Equally must they deplore the fact that many responsible citizens apparently feel that certain policies are so unsatisfactory that the only way to oppose them effectively is by violent means.’ In other words, there stands Ted Jason who hasn’t changed one bit, thank you very much.”

  “Helen-Anne Carrew called me last night,” Cullee said. “Ceil’s left him, you know—Helen-Anne talked to her at ‘Vistazo.’ And apparently it’s because she’s completely upset about his condoning violence. Upset and, I gathered from Helen-Anne, frightened. So much so that she’d like him out of the race.”

  “Did she tell Helen-Anne all that?”

  Cullee chuckled.

  “No, but you know our demon news-hen. Helen-Anne can take a sneeze, a sniff and a snuffle and write 1,500 words of in-depth analysis.”

  “The whole Washington press corps can do that,” Lafe said. He frowned. “So she’s actually left. That’s going to hurt him.”

  “That Ceil is a great gal,” Cullee said. “A real lady. Left, insofar as she’s gone to ‘Vistazo,’ anyway. I don’t think Helen-Anne thinks there’s more than that to it, at least right now. She apparently wants him to think about things a little.”

  “His statement on the riot indicates he’s doing so, magnificently,” Lafe said. “Good Lord!” he added with a blaze of anger. “That guy is a fool to play around with the kind of dynamite he’s playing around with. If Harley hadn’t died, he’d be completely discredited. Doesn’t he know that Van Ackerman and Shelby and Kleinfert and all that crew are bad, bad business? He’s an absolute fool.”

  Cullee shrugged.

  “I think he figures he can handle it. He proved at the convention that he couldn’t, but that wasn’t enough for him. He has to prove it all over again.”

  “But he’s only encouraging things that may destroy the country—organized by people who really do want to destroy the country.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Cullee said. “I know that. He thinks they’re doing it for him, poor ambitious fellow. He’ll find out. Anybody who goes down that road, in America, is inviting his own destruction.”

  “But he can destroy a lot of other things as he goes,” Lafe said grimly.

  “Well, he can’t destroy me,” Cullee said, his face taking on a sudden pugnacious look that made the Ambassador of Egypt, who happened to catch his eye, give a startled little jump and look quite guilty. “Old ’Gage and his bullyboys, they beat me up once already, you know, when Terry was here six months ago taking Gorotoland away from the British and giving us hell about civil rights. My dear old Howard University roommate ’Gage, he and his friends didn’t like the way I was standing up to black racism here in the UN, so they beat me up. But they didn’t scare me. And they won’t, either!” His scowl increased and the Egyptian Ambassador, after another quick glance, moved hurriedly away down the room.

  “They scare Sarah, though, don’t they?” Lafe asked, and at the mention of Sarah Johnson, the secretary from the American delegation whom Cullee hoped eventually to marry, the scowl faded and a gentle expression came.

  “Sarah’s a brave girl,” Cullee said. “She knows you take risks in public life, particularly nowadays. It doesn’t make her happy, but she knows it’s my life, so—that’s how it is. How about Mabel?”

  “Mabel?” The name of the widow of Senator Brigham Anderson of Utah, whose tragic suicide at the height of the Leffingwell nomination battle had shattered them all, brought a changed expression to Senator Smith’s face too: uneasy, concerned, unhappy. “Oh, she’s feared and hated politics ever since Brig’s death, and the convention only made it worse. She called me from Salt Lake City last night”—he nodded in answer to Cullee’s unspoken question—“yes, we talk almost every night, actually—but it was mainly just to urge me again to be careful, and, if possible, to get out of politics.” He sighed. “She knows that won’t work. I’m coming up to what looks like almost certain re-election in November, and I can’t get out. It’s my life, too. She knows that.”

  “I thought maybe being together at the convention—” Cullee suggested, but Lafe shook his head with a glum expression.

  “No, it just made things worse—I mean, better as far as we personally are concerned, but worse as far as getting her to marry me and get back into politics herself is concerned. The violence terrified her.” He gave a rueful, unhappy smile. “I guess little Lafe,” he said with a surprising note of bitterness, “will just have to keep on chasing half the skirts at the UN, just as they all think I do.”

  “How’s the boy?” Cullee asked. “Have you seen him since you got back from San Francisco?”

  “I went up the Hudson to the sanitarium yesterday morning,” Lafe said. His sad expression deepened at the thought of handsome young Jimmy, son of their late beloved colleague, Senator Harold Fry of West Virginia, locked away by a childhood illness in some silent, unbreachable world of his own. “There was—I thought—a flicker—just a flicker—of recognition again. But hell, buddy, you know him—you know how easy it is to think you get some response, when really it’s just that you’re wishing so desperately for one that you begin to imagine things.”

  “We didn’t imagine it last time I went with you,” Cullee said firmly. “He tried to speak to us. Now, you know that.”

  “Maybe,” Lafe said sadly. “Maybe.”

  “He did,” Cullee said. “He did. So stop trying”—he gave Lafe’s arm an affectionate squeeze—“to make yourself gloomier than you naturally are.”

  “Jesus!” Lafe said with a wince, and then a grin. “Watch it, man! You don’t know how it feels when you put all 280 pounds into a squeeze.”

  “Two-thirty,” Cullee said proudly, “and losing every day.” He grinned too. “I expect this afternoon’s session will drain out about another twenty. I get so damned tired of Tashikov jawing away at us and never saying anything but the same old lies that everybody knows are lies.”

  “And now he has Claude Maudulayne to back him up,” Lafe said thoughtfully. “I swear, the British never fail to amaze me. I love them dearly, but they do amaze me.”

  “I have a hunch,” Cullee said, “that the Speaker—the President—is going to try to wind up both these wars pretty damned fast, don’t you? This all-out attack on Mbuele would seem to indicate as much.”

  “That will make Terry happy,” Lafe said. He smiled, amused as always by the response the name of His Royal Highness Terence Wolowo Ajkaje, the M’Bulu of Mbuele, hereditary ruler of Gorotoland, was able to evoke from Congressman Hamilton.

  “That crap artist!” Cullee said in a disgusted tone. “I swear I don’t know which of those two pieces of black trash is the worst, old fancy pants Terry or his cousin, Prince Obi. But I guess our choice has got to be Terry, otherwise we won’t have a friend left anywhere in Central Africa, and that wouldn’t be so good. I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “how Felix Labaiya is feeling down there in Panama this afternoon.”

  “Encouraged by Russia and Britain, I should think,” Lafe said. “Panama is going to be tougher for us, I’m afraid. The Canal—international passage—Communist Cuba to help Felix with subversion—British opposition to interference with trade, even if it is trade with the headsman—Panama is a little more complex. But I think you’re right. Apparently Bill’s determined to smash right on through and get it over
with.”

  But when the Security Council finally convened, in its customary way, an hour after the scheduled time of three p.m., and then proceeded to drag on into the evening, past midnight, almost to three a.m. before its business was concluded, it became apparent in the reports from Gorotoland and Panama that it was not going to be so neat and easy for the impatient American President. His characteristic and experienced belief that “soonest ended, soonest mended,” was evidently not going to be supported by events.

  In the Security Council chamber, around the big circular table where so many of the world’s problems had been debated, made worse, and swept under the rug, the American diplomatic strategy was clear, simple and successful only when accompanied by a naked application of power. Its first move failed. As soon as debate began on the Soviet-United Kingdom resolution condemning America’s escalation of the war in Gorotoland and declaring the Council’s opposition to any unilateral interference with trade with Panama, Lafe Smith introduced a substitute United States resolution calling upon all nations to join in a quarantine of both rebel governments. In support he introduced captured Communist plans for simultaneous attacks on Gorotoland and Panama on Wednesday. The United States substitute was vetoed by France and the Soviet Union.

  The issue then returned to the Soviet-U.K. resolution. After several hours of angry outcry against “American aggression … U.S. imperialism … war-mad American leaders … deliberate U.S. interference in the affairs of democratic, freedom-loving peoples” and other stirring phrases always ready on the tongue of any well-trained UN diplomat, the resolution was put to a vote. It was defeated on the third American veto in history, cast by Cullee Hamilton after a short and exasperated exchange with Lord Maudulayne, witnessed with an obvious glee by the Soviet Ambassador and a bland smile by many others.