Promise of Joy Page 6

  He had always believed and acted in a certain way, always represented a certain “tough” attitude in foreign policy. Many millions of his countrymen had depended upon him to do this. They depended upon him still. He would be betraying them and betraying himself if he withdrew.

  The skeptical, impatient expression his family, friends and colleagues knew so well momentarily touched his face.

  He wouldn’t consider it!

  He would be a fool if he did.

  His reaction revealed that Orrin Knox, having begun to mend, was mending very rapidly.

  So only one alternative remained, and that was to find somebody occupying a reasonable middle ground and do his best to persuade the Committee to go along with the choice.

  In a sudden flash of inspiration, he knew instantly whom he would nominate.

  He did not know how the Committee would take this.

  But he knew he would do it.

  For the first time since horror struck three days ago, a smile—grim, determined, ironic, not very lasting or much filled with humor, but at least a smile—crossed his face.

  Their Presidential nominee, they would find, might be down but he was not out.

  When Hal knocked gently on the door a few moments later, his father’s response brought a smile, relieved and deeply affectionate, to his face too.

  “I’m ready,” Orrin announced in a voice still weak but scarcely reluctant. “Lead me to ’em!”

  And so the National Committee returned to heavily guarded Kennedy Center, scene just four days ago of the “Great Riot” in which the enormous mob led by the paramilitary forces of the National Anti-War Activities Congress had stormed the doors after the nomination of Orrin Knox for President. Thirty-nine had died on that terrifying, bitter day. Only the subsequent nomination of Ted Jason as Vice President and Ted’s dramatically soothing speech to his hysterically violent supporters appeared to have saved the country from revolution.

  The memories hung heavy on Esmé Harbellow Stryke and Asa B. Attwood of California, on Anna Hooper Bigelow and Perry Amboy of New Hampshire, on Pierre Boissevain of Vermont and Blair Hannah of Illinois, on Ewan MacDonald MacDonald of Wyoming, on Lathia Talbot Jennings of South Dakota and Mary Buttner Baffleburg of Pennsylvania, and on all their fellow national committeemen and national committeewomen as they prepared to reconvene.

  The memories were not eased by the fact that the scene was once again almost exactly as they had left it, and for the same reasons: NAWAC and the violent again were at their stations, and again the Committee was under terrible pressure.

  Again the President had ordered out the troops, again the same precautions surrounded the hundred men and women who must select a new running mate for Orrin Knox. Again they were housed at military headquarters in Fort Myer, Virginia, just across the Potomac; again they arrived at the Center in Army cars, protected by motorcycle outriders; again they found themselves under siege. And again the President, as national committeeman from Colorado and chairman of the Committee, had arranged it so that the meeting should be held in the Playhouse, its seating capacity kept to a rigid five hundred: the Committee, three hundred visitors and observers divided as equally as possible between Knox and Jason supporters, and one hundred from the media. This last restriction had produced the same anguished denunciations that had greeted it before, but the President had been adamant. The original meeting had been chaos and circus enough and he did not want this one made more so. Again the Times, the Post, The Greatest Publication That Absolutely Ever Was, Walter Dobius, Frankly Unctuous, and his network colleagues, and all the rest, had cried, “Dictatorship!” and “Suppression of the news!” But William Abbott was a tough old man and he didn’t give a damn. Grumbling and unhappy, the media too had its collective memories revivified—creating, as the Times remarked acridly, “a sense of déjà damned vu.”

  Around Kennedy Center’s land perimeter the President had again arranged for riot-trained soldiers to supplement the District of Columbia police—a thousand this time instead of the five hundred before. An inner ring of riot-trained Marines—also increased from five hundred to a thousand—had been assigned to guard the Playhouse. In the Potomac’s Georgetown Channel, Theodore Roosevelt Island and Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, nearest approach to the Center from Virginia, had been closed. Across the river a strip a mile long and six hundred yards deep—again, double last time—had been sealed off to all traffic. In the channel four small armed Coast Guard cutters lay at anchor just off the esplanade, overhead a dozen helicopters were on regular patrol over the entire area, both precautions also escalated. At re-established “Checkpoint Alpha,” sole entrance for Committee members, visiting dignitaries and the media, security regulations even tighter than before, if possible, had been reinstated.

  And beyond the barricades on the land side, and in hastily re-erected tent towns at the edge of the barred zone across the river, NAWAC and its friends were also back, and also nearly doubled. Just before he left the White House in his heavily guarded limousine to come to the Center, the President had been advised by the Secretary of Defense and the District chief of police that crowd estimates were between a hundred fifty and two hundred thousand, with more thousands still pouring into the capital from every plane, train, bus and freeway.

  He too, Bill Abbott felt with a weary sigh as his bristling cavalcade headed west toward the Center, had a sense of repetition so heavy as to be almost unbearable. After all the bitter battling to put together the Knox-Jason ticket, after all the tension, bloodshed and horror, now another horror had been piled on top and everything had been smashed to smithereens. All the careful compromises of democracy, hammered out at such cost, destroyed in a bloody instant by those who felt only contempt for democracy and wished to destroy it … or so he analyzed their motives.

  He did not know, yet, who had perpetrated the murders at the Monument, but he intended to find out. The commission he had appointed to investigate Harley Hudson’s mysterious death had a new mission now. He had conferred with its chairman, the ex-Chief Justice, within two hours after the assassinations. Already the staff was at work interviewing witnesses. He had a strong hunch that there was a link between all these murders and he thought he knew where it came from. He also suspected strongly that those responsible were very well entrenched in NAWAC. If he could find the connection, he would have them—providing he could convince some of his more skeptical countrymen to accept the facts in their columns, news stories and broadcasts. At least he would have the culprits as far as the historical record was concerned.

  He was convinced that the trail led straight to the Soviet Ambassador, Vasily Tashikov, and his “agricultural aide,” long ago tagged by the FBI, military intelligence and the CIA as being the head of the Russian secret police network, the KGB, for the eastern United States.

  If that was true, however, surely a great mistake must have been committed. For surely the man they wanted to kill was Orrin Knox, not Ted Jason, who, on all the evidence Bill Abbott had seen, would have been an easy mark for Soviet pressure had he become President in the event of Orrin’s death.

  Orrin must have been the target—although, as it was turning out, the President could not really see that the assassins had lost much. The situation that had been created for Orrin was such a tangle that he might end up being unable to govern, too: for different reasons, but as fortuitously for America’s enemies. Perhaps, in fact, even more so, since a President under such attack as Orrin was under might be an even easier mark than, in the President’s estimation, Edward M. Jason would have been.

  Except for one single factor, he told himself with the mildest glimmer of hope as the first outlying fringes of the mob began to appear along his route, screaming obscenities and shaking their fists at the old man who sat stolidly back in the cushions and gave no slightest acknowledgment that they existed.

  Except for one single factor.

  Long ago, watching the then freshman Senator from Illinois carry some point of debate
by sheer logic and strength of character, the late Senator Seabright B. Cooley of South Carolina had been moved to a remark that none of Orrin’s friends had ever forgotten.

  “There comes a time,” Seab had said in his deceptively drowsy, sleepy-eyed way, “when most folks let themselves feel beaten and they give up on an issue. But not Orrin. Orrin keeps at it. You mark my words, now, Orrin will go far. And do you know why? Because Orrin’s got somethin’ jest a leetle bit extra, that’s why. Yes, sir. Jest a leetle bit extra.”

  “Orrin’s little extra” had been a byword on the Hill and in American politics ever since; and since it was the quality that had carried him finally, over so many obstacles and so much bitter opposition, to his party’s Presidential nomination, it was the thing to which William Abbott was pinning his hopes as his cavalcade, coming now within sight of Kennedy Center, brought to full volume the angry wave of sound that kept him company.

  “Orrin’s little extra,” needed now as it had never been before—first, by Orrin himself, and then, the President was convinced, by the country and the world.

  The Secretary of State had looked wan and still in considerable pain a couple of hours ago during their talk at his home in Spring Valley, but on the whole he had appeared to be increasingly strong. Yet William Abbott the lifelong bachelor knew as well as Bob Munson and Orrin’s children how terribly much he must be missing Beth, and how terribly heartsick and weakened by her death he must be.

  God knew he missed her, the President thought, recalling the shrewd, calm, comfortable presence that had contributed so much to the life and career of Orrin Knox. Beth Knox had been a rare woman, and she and Orrin had enjoyed a unique partnership in both marriage and politics. In fact, as in many great political careers of American history, the two had been so intermingled that no one, least of all the participants, could tell where the one ended and the other began. From the very first campaign for the state senate in Illinois it had been “Orrin and Beth” on the billboards and on the hustings; and during all the contentious, controversial, battling years since, in the state senate, the governorship, the United States Senate and finally the State Department, it had been “Orrin and Beth” who had together served, first the people of the state and then the people of the country, with an uncompromising integrity and an uncompromising opposition to all those attitudes and trends which they believed weakening, if not fatal, to the survival of democracy. This had brought them the unrelenting hostility of many in the media, the academic, religious, artistic and professional worlds who did not see the attitudes and trends in the same light they did. But it had not deflected or deterred either of them; nor had it jarred the steady balance or the wry good humor with which Beth, in particular, had responded to the incessant and unrelenting belittlement.

  Orrin, of course, had not suffered those he believed to be fools quite so equably. Possessed of great intelligence, a lively temper and a tongue sometimes too willing to be tart and impatient, he had often responded broadside to his enemies instead of trying to go around them. More often than not, this had worked in the Senate, whose members normally favored the more subtle approach but in his case respected his sheer intelligence and the powerful will that went with it. It was not, however, until Harley Hudson appointed him Secretary of State that he became, as he himself acknowledged, a much more moderate and diplomatic soul. Not too diplomatic, for that wouldn’t have been Orrin: but at least more reasonable, more willing to compromise, a little less certain that he had all the answers to everything.

  Then had come the convention, Harley’s decision to run again, Orrin’s belief that his dream of the White House was finally put to rest forever; Harley’s mysterious death, Orrin’s battle with Ted for the nomination, Orrin’s squeak-in victory and his realization that he had to give in and compromise with Ted and his supporters if he wanted to win. Out of that had come, suddenly, a man mature in a way Orrin had never really been mature before. And then had come horror at the Monument, and out of that—what kind of Orrin?

  The President did not know and his puzzlement must have shown in his face to some degree when he arrived at heavily guarded “Checkpoint Alpha,” because the reporters and television cameramen waiting there rushed forward as far as they were allowed, which wasn’t much, to shout their frantic appeals for enlightenment. What was the nominee going to do?

  “I don’t know,” the President called out sharply, “and if I did, you know I wouldn’t tell you. Why don’t you wait and see, as the Committee and I are going to have to do?”

  “Old bastard!” the Post commented, not too quietly. “He won’t tell us anything.”

  “That’s right,” the President responded with equal cordiality. “Why should I?”

  “The people have a right to know!” the Post shouted indignantly; but the President’s response was a smile of such openly sarcastic amusement that it almost said aloud, “Look who’s talking!” As such it was promptly wiped off the television screens and he was allowed to enter the building without further questioning, followed by mutters quite as savage, if more muted, as any that had been shouted at him in the streets.

  So there it was again, he reflected with an annoyance that again showed briefly in his eyes, that eternal hostility that crippled them all, press and politicians alike: for which, he supposed, he was just as much to blame as they were. Certainly Orrin was, for after an early period of trying to appease critics who were implacably against him on the most fundamental of issues, foreign policy, he had come finally to the conclusion that they could never be appeased, that as long as he pursued what they liked to call a “tough” or “pro-war” policy toward the Communists, they were never going to forgive him, never relent, never be even minimally fair. When he finally decided, permanently, that he must take his stand on what he believed regardless of their opposition, he had guaranteed a state of permanent warfare with the media. Sooner or later all those who supported him were drawn into the same vortex and received the same treatment.

  How would it be, the President wondered for a moment as he went mechanically through the motions of greeting the troops inside the doors, smiling, confident and apparently fully in command, if the leaders of the media ever found themselves in a situation where their freedoms were really threatened by the policies they had always so vigorously advocated and supported? How would it be if they turned out to be wrong, if suddenly someone they had raised up—even a Ted Jason, perhaps—turned upon them and, using the public support they themselves had created for him, tore them down? How would they enjoy the harvest they had sown for so many long, bitter years?… But, of course, he dismissed the thought, it would never happen in America. They would always be free to pursue their harshly unbalanced attacks on all who disagreed with them. They would never have to face the reckoning. They would always be safe, always protected, always free to be unrestrained and irresponsible, for such was what they considered freedom to be. Not even if Ted Jason had become President, he was sure, would any attempt ever have been made to attack or control the media. Not even Ted’s most violent supporters would have dared. This was America, and in America such things could not be.

  Certainly they would not occur under Orrin Knox, that was sure, even though the President had moments of exasperation and resentment when he almost felt they should. The attack on Orrin now was utterly disgraceful, the wildest and most vicious he had seen in some time, and he had seen a good many in his long service on Capitol Hill. It was not enough that the man must lose his wife to an assassin, he must be accused of helping to plot the whole thing in order to remove someone who disagreed with him from the ticket. What kind of minds they must be, the President thought, Walter who would promulgate such a horrid myth, and his friends who could seize upon and embellish it!

  He was frowning when he reached the door of the Playhouse, and it was so they saw him as the guards snapped to attention, and the doorkeeper bellowed, “Ladeez and Gemmun, the Prezdent of the Yewnited States!”—Blair Hannah, Ewan MacDonald MacDo
nald, Lizzie Hanson McWharter, Mary Buttner Baffleburg and the rest of the National Committee; Robert A. Leffingwell, Patsy Jason Labaiya in heavy mourning for her brother, Lord and Lady Maudulayne, Raoul and Celestine Barre, Vasily Tashikov, Krishna Khaleel and all the other observers domestic and foreign who had been given tickets; the Times, the Post, The Greatest Publication, Time, Newsweek, Walter Dobius, Frankly Unctuous and the other members of the media who were there by virtue of personal stature, prestige of publication, or the luck of the draw. A President upset, and one obviously in no mood to waste time, or to pretend in any way that the business before them was any less serious than it was.

  He strode swiftly down the aisle, mounted the small platform, moved to the lectern at its center; turned quickly to note that the official reporter was seated at the small desk to his left, turned back to look directly into the banked lights of the television cameras that flanked the room.

  “Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen,” he said crisply, and waited for a moment as they did so, their expectant eyes never leaving his face. “By virtue of the authority vested in me as chairman of the National Committee, I declare this new special emergency session of the Committee to be now in session for the purpose of selecting a nominee for Vice President of the United States. If the distinguished national committeeman from the state of Washington will oblige us as he did before”—he paused and a little sigh, tired and sad, escaped his lips—“and how short a time ago that was!—then we shall be very grateful.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Luther Redfield said, his voice shaking slightly with the gravity of it; and proceeded in his somewhat florid but desperately sincere fashion to deliver the convocation while they all stood again, heads bowed, and far off the distant sea of NAWAC murmured and rumbled, seeming to lap ominously against the walls of the silent room.