Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason Read online

  But it had not taken him long to recover.

  The violence that culminated in Crystal Knox’s tragedy had been, he soon convinced himself, as much Orrin’s responsibility as his. The savage berating by Harley Hudson had been wiped out in an instant in the crash of Air Force One that took Harley to his death: instantly Ted had been back in the running for President. The mood that had prompted the NAWAC-led “Great Riot” at Kennedy Center had melted like magic when Ted appeared after Orrin’s nomination to receive the fervent adulation and obedience of the mob. And now Orrin, making the only compromise possible in view of the circumstances facing him in the nation and abroad, has invited Ted to be his running mate.

  So Governor Jason has come safely through; and may yet, if something should happen to Orrin—or even without that, just in the normal course of time and politics—sit in the White House himself.

  He realizes as he gives Ceil a quick smile and begins methodically putting on trousers, shirt, cuff links and tie, that all of this could be interpreted as sheer ambition and the ruthless sacrifice of everything to it—and nothing more. It is clear enough what many think, at least others in his immediate vicinity—the vicinity of power. Out in the country and across the world, most of the reaction is more charitable, and more in line with his concept of himself.

  KNOX BOWS TO PEACE DEMAND, TAKES JASON FOR V.P., the New York Times has it; GOVERNOR EXPECTED TO USE INFLUENCE TO SEEK SWIFT END TO WARS IN GOROTOLAND AND PANAMA … ANTI-WAR FORCES WIN, the Daily Telegraph agrees; JASON RETURNS KNOX TICKET TO POSTURE OF PEACE … IMPERIALIST WARMONGERS FAIL, Pravda avers; JASON HAILED AS WORLD PEACE HOPE ON KNOX WAR TICKET … RUNNING DOGS OF WAR CRUSHED, the Peking People’s Daily maintains; JASON THWARTS KNOX DRIVE FOR WORLD DOMINION.

  An overwhelming majority of the headline writers, editorial writers, news writers, columnists and commentators of his native land, and the world, agree. He finds this very comforting, for it is exactly the way he sees it himself.

  There come into his mind once again the bitter conversations he had with President Abbott and with Orrin during the course of the National Committee’s deliberations—conversations in which he kept insisting, patiently and for the most part in good temper, that he spoke for, and was responsible to, only the sincere and worthy elements of the country as they protested with an earnest and genuine dismay the twin catastrophes of Gorotoland and Panama.

  For who could not sincerely and genuinely oppose those two ghastly follies, begun by President Hudson and carried forward with a ruthless determination by President Abbott?

  When rebel forces in far-off Gorotoland in central Africa had risen in rebellion against “Terrible Terry”—His Royal Highness Prince Terence Wolowo Ajkaje, 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele—they had also killed some forty American missionaries of both sexes and burned a Standard Oil installation in the north of the country. Their leader, “Prince Obi”—Obifumatta, Terry’s cousin and challenger for the throne—had defied the United States, called on the United Nations, the Soviets and the Chinese for help, seemed for a few days to be succeeding in his drive to topple Terry. Then Harley Hudson had sharply escalated the number of American forces in the country—after Harley’s death Bill Abbott had escalated them even further—and now Obi was in exile and Terry appeared to be reestablishing firm control. But American forces were still there, the situation was still fluid, Obi was still trying to gather support wherever he could for a try at reinvasion. At any moment the whole thing could explode again. Who could not condemn it, for all the two Presidents’ pious pretenses that they must “stop Communist aggression?”

  Few believed that old chestnut in this day and age.

  And Panama. There the situation was even worse, for hostilities were not diminishing in Panama. Clever Felix Labaiya-Sofra, Ted’s almost-ex brother-in-law (his sister Patsy Jason Labaiya’s divorce action being now in its final stages), had formed his Panamanian People’s Liberation Movement, attacked the Canal and launched, also with help from both Communist giants, an all-out drive to rid his country once and for all of the hated Yanquis who had created it. In Felix’s mountainous and difficult terrain American efforts had so far not been successful. Nor had President Abbott’s bluff—for surely it must be one, he wouldn’t dare follow through—to blockade the country against the supplies being shipped in not only by the Communists but by Britain, France and other good friends of the United States.

  Bill Abbott’s threat had produced no decrease in hostilities. It had only brought a further uproar in the United Nations, which, in the hectic debates over Gorotoland, had already come very close to expelling the United States because of its racial troubles at home. Most of the UN was still vocally and violently opposed to U.S. actions, even though Gorotoland appeared to be subsiding. Panama most certainly was not.

  Naturally out of all this there had come great domestic uneasiness and disturbance throughout America. Ted was willing to concede that the protest had been inflamed by such organizations as DEFY—Defenders of Equality for You—headed by the brilliant, bitter black LeGage Shelby; COMFORT—the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce—whose spokesman was one of Ted’s most active supporters, Wyoming’s strange and near-psychotic Senator Fred Van Ackerman; and KEEP—the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism—headed by its Knight Kommander, oil-rich Rufus Kleinfert. It was true that his own idea of consolidating the three, plus all others who wished to make their feelings known, under the single broad umbrella of the National Anti-War Activities Congress had perhaps increased the tension to some degree. The leaders of NAWAC, some obvious and open, some more clandestine and mysterious, did seem to have a tendency to encourage violent rather than peaceable methods of protest.

  But still, Ted was convinced that the vast majority of citizens for whom NAWAC now appeared to speak were decent, loyal, concerned and deeply troubled. And, as he had maintained throughout to President Abbott and to Orrin, he felt he had both a right and a duty to defend and represent them.

  He had conceded to the President in their first conference on the subject, shortly before the National Committee began its meetings, that some forces of protest involved in the demonstrations and violence “are not sincere or genuine or perhaps even loyal to the country.

  “But there are many, many millions more,” he had maintained, “who honestly, earnestly and sincerely deplore and abhor the policies your Administration is following in world affairs. Now, these people are not kooks. They are not crackpots. They are not wild-eyed radicals or subversive Communists. They are decent Americans, deeply and genuinely disturbed.

  “Am I to repudiate them, when they look to me for voice? Am I to say to them, ‘Sorry, run along. I agree with Big Daddy, everything’s 100 percent okay and you’re just a bunch of disloyal rats?’ I cannot do that, Mr. President. I don’t believe it to be true.”

  “What do you believe?” Bill Abbott had asked, as others had asked and others would continue to ask. “That’s what I don’t understand. Perhaps if I could, I’d understand better where you think you’re going and what you think you’re trying to do.”

  “I think, if you will forgive me,” Governor Jason had said quietly, pointing to the massive Presidential desk, “that I am going right to that desk over there.”

  But that had only made the President angry and he had repeated some of the tired old clichés people on his side of the issue liked to repeat:

  “These things backfire. Violence feeds upon itself; presently all order and all certainty are swept away. You cannot control these forces.… ”

  And at last in desperation he had turned to the personal attack upon Ted so reminiscent of Harley Hudson when he, too, was trying to divert the Governor from his campaign for the White House:

  “I wish I could believe you were sincere, Ted. I wish I could believe you know what you’re doing, when you run with that pack. I wish I could honestly think your method would bring us through. I might get out of your way if that were the case. But I cannot for the l
ife of me believe you to be anything but overly ambitious, taking desperate chances with the very fabric of the nation, flirting and perhaps even conniving with forces whose capacities for destruction you just don’t understand. I think you’re the product of your upbringing. I think you think that just because your name’s Jason you can ride any whirlwind, control any holocaust, put any genie back in the bottle. And, my friend, I just don’t think you can.”

  “I thank you for worrying about me,” Ted had said dryly. Bill’s reply had alienated him even further.

  “Oh, not you. I don’t give a damn about you. But quite a lot of my fellow Americans are involved in what you do—possibly the fate of the country itself is involved. And that makes it a worrisome matter, for me. You have the power to lead or mislead. Right now, you’re misleading, in my estimation, because you’re misled—by ambition and greed for office and people who are taking advantage of those two weaknesses to trap you into being a stalking horse for their own purposes.”

  Shortly thereafter, deeply angered and offended, Governor Jason had terminated the interview and withdrawn, depressed by his inability to penetrate so closed and prejudiced a mind.

  And then just two days ago, in their final interview before Orrin had chosen him for Vice President, he and Orrin had gone at it again. Orrin too had parroted the clichés, and again he had held his ground—though yielding a bit as a concession to Orrin’s obvious sincerity and his own decision that he must compromise in some degree if he were to receive the nomination and so be able to assist Orrin in bringing the country back to some sane middle ground in foreign policy. For Orrin had been adamant:

  “Much as I want to win this election—much as I feel that I can bring my country back to some sort of reasonable sanity if I do win it—I am not going to win it at the price of taking on the ticket a man who either honestly or willfully refuses to recognize the desperate dangers in the violent elements that support him.… There is an element of conspiracy in the country; it isn’t all just innocent, democratic, happy-as-a-lark, spontaneous protest; there are enemies of America who are trying to use it to bring America down. Good God, man, they’d be fools if they didn’t! And one thing they definitely aren’t, is fools.…

  “Therefore, if you come on this ticket, Ted, I want from you tomorrow, before the National Committee and before the world, a flat-out repudiation, with no equivocations whatsoever, of NAWAC, DEFY, COMFORT, KEEP and any and all other elements of organized violence in the country. Ever since Harley’s death you have had repeated opportunities to do this and you haven’t done it. Each time there have been qualifications and a lot of tricky words.…

  “I won’t have it, Ted,” he had concluded quietly. “I’m simply not going to have it.… Either you cut those connections altogether or you don’t come along with me.

  “You decide.”

  And Ted had decided.

  He had relented and met Orrin’s objections part way, conceding that there might be deliberately subversive elements among his supporters, emphasizing that if so, he did not know of them, and that if they existed, “Of course I shall repudiate them.

  “If there is proof of their subversion, I shall denounce them as vigorously and relentlessly as you. If it is impossible to accept their support without jeopardizing the country, of course I shall cut them off.”

  “At what point will you admit the danger?” Orrin had persisted. “What sort of proof do you have to have?”

  It was then that Ted interrupted the conversation to ask for a couple of hours to consider his answer. He had gone back to Patsy’s and thought it out … and he had hesitated at the moment of lifting the telephone to call Orrin and capitulate, because when all was said and done, he had too much faith in the country. He was confident he could control the violent and bring them back to safer channels of democracy. He felt that Americans had a right to protest policies with which they did not agree. He honestly believed that the great majority who did so were sincere, earnest and loyal.

  He actually had his hand on the receiver, about to lift it and tell Orrin to forget the Vice Presidency, when Ceil had called from “Vistazo.” In his happiness over her return—although no quid pro quo had been requested or thought of—he had realized that the only way it could last was if he conformed to what she believed best, and joined Orrin.

  Next day before the National Committee and the world he had given his pledge:

  “If, in the organization known as NAWAC or in any of its member organizations such as COMFORT, DEFY, KEEP or any of the others—there be any whose purposes are not within the law—who do not wish to keep their dissent within the law and within common decency—then I repudiate them here and now and declare that I wish their support of me to cease forthwith.…

  “There is a place for decent and honorable protest and dissent. I shall defend it always. But to those others,” he had concluded sternly—“if others there be—I give notice and fair warning.”

  And although this seemed to leave a good many people, including Orrin and Ceil, still wondering exactly where he stood, it seemed to be enough both for the noisy ranks of NAWAC waiting outside the Center and for the Committee. Within five minutes he had been nominated by acclamation to be Orrin’s running mate.…

  “My goodness,” Ceil says lightly now, ruffling the hair on the back of his neck, startling him out of the intense concentration into which he has fallen as he stands before the mirror absent-mindedly knotting his tie, “that’s a brown study. What are you doing, going over your speech at the Monument?”

  “No,” he says, coming out of it with a smile, turning to take her in his arms and give her a quick kiss. “Other speeches.”

  “All right,” she says cheerfully, moving away to pose by the window, “don’t tell me.… How do I look? Like a proper Vice-Presidential wife?”

  “Much more beautiful than that,” he says firmly. “In fact, there’s never been another in the same league.”

  She chuckles.

  “You candidates will say anything for a vote. What are you going to say, by the way? Or is it a secret from me as well as from your great panting public?”

  “I hope they aren’t panting quite as hard as they have been,” he says with an odd moroseness in his tone, sitting down on the bed and surveying her thoughtfully from head to foot. “They’ve got me now—or Orrin’s got me. I don’t quite know which.”

  “Orrin has, I suspect,” she says more seriously. “Which is the way it should be, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” he asks, again with the odd little melancholy in his voice. “I don’t know. I couldn’t say, at this point. I just wish he were a little less rigid about things, that’s all.”

  “And he wishes you were a little less—” she begins, and then softens it with a smile. “You’ll be good for each other. You’ll find the middle ground. I’m sure of it.”

  “Are you?” he asks dryly. “That’s nice.”

  “You’ve got to,” she says, suddenly serious, coming to sit down beside him, taking his hand. “You simply must. So—what are you going to say? Or must I wait and hear it, just like everybody else?”

  He gives her a quizzical look and squeezes her hand. “What is this? Did Orrin put you up to something?”

  She shakes her head, returns the squeeze, gets up and moves to an overstuffed armchair by the window; shoves it around briskly so that it faces him; sits down and studies him with a characteristically intent and thoughtful expression.

  “Now,” she says, “what’s it going to be? Around corners, or straight down the street?”

  For just a second he looks annoyed. Then he laughs.

  “We have to leave for the ceremonies in ten minutes. I couldn’t possibly tell you in that time.”

  “You could give me an idea,” she says, but he only smiles and shakes his head.

  She looks momentarily flustered but manages to respond lightly. “Now, don’t make me beg. That wouldn’t be nice to your poor old wife who’s come all the way from C
alifornia to be with you in your hour of triumph.”

  “Not a poor old wife at all,” he says, rising and coming over to lean down and kiss her again. “Only the most beautiful wife in American public life today. And the wittiest. And the most intelligent. And the most perceptive. That’s what scares me, really—you see through me so.”

  “That will be the day,” she says with a rueful little smile, accepting his proffered hand, rising to stand beside him and look straight into his eyes. “I hope, my dear friend,” she says very quietly, “that you are going to be today what everyone hopes and believes Edward M. Jason is.”

  For just a moment he returns her look with a gravity as deep and naked as her own. Then the protective curtain of banter she has come to know too well in these recent months of his campaigning for the Presidency comes down once again. She had hoped when she returned last night that it might be gone, and for a while it had seemed that it was. But she realizes now, with a sinking heart, that here it is again.

  “If you will continue to be the Ceil Jason I believe you are,” he says lightly, “then I shall be able to be the Ted Jason everyone wants me to be. Is it a deal?”

  She returns again the rueful little smile.

  “If it’s the best one I’m going to be offered … I guess it is.”

  But at this, surprisingly, the banter vanishes and he speaks with an absolute and almost desperate honesty.

  “If you were not beside me,” he says softly, “I honestly do not know what I would do, Ceil. I honestly do not.”

  Now it is her turn to speak lightly, though he can see she is deeply moved. “I guess that’s a good enough deal for any girl. I’ll try to be worthy of it.”

  “Oh, you are,” he says gently, taking her face between his hands. “There’s never been any doubt of that.”

  “Hey, up there!” Patsy calls in her raucous way. “Can’t you hear the limousines and motorcycles revving up in the driveway? Your parade’s about to begin, hero. And heroine. Let’s GO!”