by Allen Drury
“Let us hope so,” Tashikov said. “His support would be helpful.”
“It also,” Raoul Barre suggested, “might be decisive in helping him become President. In which case a more sane and responsible policy might be followed by the White House hereafter.”
“If this ends in a week or two,” Walter said slowly, “it probably will not affect the campaign. If it drags, it will. If we are still involved six months from now, or even two months from now, the effect may be decisive.”
“Then I would think the Governor would have no choice,” Raoul said.
Walter smiled.
“If he hasn’t gone on record by Friday night, I hope to make it clear to him in my speech that he has no choice.”
“It is amazing, your influence in the United States,” Vasily Tashikov said in an admiring tone, his eyes briefly meeting the French Ambassador’s. “Absolutely amazing.”
“And so deserved,” Raoul Barre agreed smoothly. “It is of inestimable help in persuading the American people to support a sound and constructive policy.”
“It is a great help in the fight for peace and justice everywhere,” the Soviet Ambassador said solemnly.
“A major weapon in the cause of sane and rational international behavior,” Raoul affirmed. “Indispensable!”
“Except,” Walter said with a wry expression, “that sometimes in the White House, where it is most needed, it is totally ignored.”
“But you have the last word, Walter,” Raoul said soothingly. “You journalists always have the last word.”
Walter Dobius looked solemn.
“I have devoted my working life to being worthy of the responsibility.”
“And have succeeded brilliantly,” Tashikov assured him.
“Thank you,” Walter said gravely. “I do my best.…By the way,” he said abruptly as the waitress brought the bill and they prepared to leave, “what do either of you hear about Felix Labaiya?”
It seemed to him that for a split second the Soviet Ambassador looked knowledgeable about something, but as quickly the expression vanished; and he could sense that Raoul Barre knew nothing. He said as much, in a puzzled tone.
“I do not know, except that he departed abruptly last night for Panama. I was not aware of any crisis down there. It seems odd, on the eve of the Security Council meeting, though I suppose his deputy will represent him.”
“Nor do I know of any crisis down there,” Walter said, “which is exactly why I wonder if perhaps there isn’t one. What do you hear, Mr. Ambassador?”
But Vasily Tashikov was ready for him. He shrugged.
“The comings and goings of the Ambassador of Panama,” he said with a bland smile, “are almost as unexpected and unexplainable as those of his wife, the surprising Patsy. I do not know. I am puzzled, too.”
They were still discussing the mystifying nature of Felix’s sudden flight home when they caught up with the Indian Ambassador, and with him walked slowly along to the Delegates’ Lounge, a-buzz as always with the greetings, gossip, and rumors that comprise 75 percent of the UN’s business on any given day.
The subject of Felix was of interest in Washington, too, where, among all the other business of the onrushing crisis—the notification of the arrival of the first American ships off Tanzania, the landing of the first squadron of fighter-bombers in Leopoldville, the crash of a Marine transport on takeoff from Libya, with fifteen killed—(U.S. GOROTOLAND TRAGEDY, the afternoon newspapers cried with triumphant headlines and news stories that dwelt with loving attention on America’s shortcomings. OWN PLANES CROWDED US, SURVIVOR SAYS)—the President still had time to check with the Secretary of State on what was going on in Panama. He received from him a puzzled but intuitive guess. Helen-Anne Carrew, equally intuitive, was at that same moment going right to the source.
“Patsy, love,” she was saying as she leaned confidentially over Patsy’s shoulder in the closing moments of the special luncheon the Women’s National Press Club was giving for the First Lady at the Mayflower, “what’s this I hear about your hubby dashing home? My sources tell me Panama may explode at any minute. Is it true?”
“Helen-Anne,” Patsy began in an annoyed tone and then hastily modified it—“darling—I don’t know WHERE you pick up all these silly rumors you peddle all the time. Really, I don’t. I told Walter last night and I’ll tell you today that Felix has gone to ‘Suerte,’ the family estate down there. I believe there’s some problem with the workmen. His mother and grandmother are too old to tend to it, so he’s gone home for a day or two. He’ll be right back, for heaven’s sake. What is everybody so worried about?”
“I didn’t know anybody was, except Walter and me,” Helen-Anne said, giving a dutifully cordial nod to the First Lady, four seats beyond Patsy at the head table. She emitted her sardonic snort. “If we are, I can assure you the whole world soon will be. But if you say he’ll be back, I suppose he’ll be back.”
“He WILL be back. Before you can even print it. So why bother?”
“I don’t know,” Helen-Anne said with a speculative look in her eyes. “I still heard something funny last night at the Indonesian Embassy.”
“Indonesia?” Patsy said with a sniff. “What do they know about anything?”
“They’re experts on Australia,” Helen-Anne said with a wry chuckle. “You ought to hear them rave. Well, O.K., sweetie, if that’s all you’ll tell Auntie Helen, I guess it’s all you’ll tell her. Don’t let Felix make a liar of you, now! I’d hate to have to drag the whole stinking mess into the open.”
“Oh, Helen-Anne!” Patsy said as she turned back to the Ambassadress of Guinea on her left. “You do run on so.”
“Maybe,” Helen-Anne agreed. “But it usually adds up to something, sooner or later.”
But what it would add up to this time, the small, neat, dark-haired, dark-visaged figure standing on the terrace at “Suerte” and gazing far down the valley between the mountains was not quite sure at the moment. Don Felix Labaiya-Sofra, oligarch of Panama, son of a President, his country’s Ambassador to Washington and the United Nations, generator of many plans, focus of many discontents, had been home twelve hours, and out of them no clear picture as yet emerged.
To his mother and to ancient Doña Anna his grandmother, huddled away in their far corners of the rambling old estancia, he had said merely that he had felt it was time to check on the work of the estate now that spring was almost here. Doña Anna had received this with the inattention of age, his mother with a certain silent skepticism that annoyed him but which he did not feel he need expend the energy to combat. They had retired together to their rooms and, as far as he knew, had not been aware of the steady stream of visitors who had come furtively through the night from Panama City to the brooding acres at the foot of Chiriqui. Or if they had been aware they had not emerged to say so, and so he had felt free to proceed without reference to the nagging feeling at the back of his mind that of course they would not approve, could they know what he was undertaking.
That he should be undertaking it, finally, after so many years of preparation, of planning, of dissembling, and making do with half-best at the hands of the hated creators of his country, was, he believed, a tribute to his own ingenuity and skill in profiting from Yanqui mistakes. He had watched, with a semblance of tolerance but an inward contempt, while the blundering homeland of his wife and brother-in-law had staggered from one defeat to another down the slippery slopes of the later twentieth century. Six months ago the tempo had appeared to accelerate, when he had successfully steered through the United Nations and brought close to final victory the motion to censure the United States in the wake of Terence Ajkaje’s visit to South Carolina and all its consequences in focusing world disapproval upon America’s racial practices. Briefly the Americans had seemed to recover, there had been a lull. Then had come the rebellion in Gorotoland, the American intervention on the old-fashioned, no-longer-valid theory that missionaries should be protected, that a country’s nationa
ls should be safe on good behavior, that commercial rights granted by a legal government should be protected—and the Achilles’ heel of America’s persistent naïveté concerning the cold-blooded realities of a coldblooded age was once again revealed.
It had seemed the opportune time to advance certain plans that first began at “Suerte” fifty years and more ago, in the time of his grandfather, Don Jorge.
He had sent word that he was coming home, and obediently, some from the professions, some from the university, some from the slums but quite a few, also, from the opulent homes where they suavely entertained the rulers of the Canal Zone, his friends had slipped away and come to him in the night.
Whether this was indeed the time, he did not know for sure, even though many of them told him so. He was close enough to America, both by marriage and from all the years he had spent there, so that he was not one to underestimate the United States, for all its fumblings and its often wide-eyed incompetence in world affairs. Its action in Gorotoland might furnish the ideal opportunity, but it also demonstrated that the Colossus was quite capable of moving, and moving fast, when it thought it had to. Therefore Felix hesitated, though in his final conversation before leaving the UN yesterday he had been assured that all was in readiness; had been reminded of the distance between Panama and Gorotoland; and had been urged to take the step that would, in his colleague’s opinion, irrevocably commit the United States to a course it could not possibly pursue without disaster.
Felix was not so sure, nor was he so sure that he should move before his brother-in-law made his position known. Governor Jason was one of the few men Felix feared, both because of the economic pressures his companies could exert upon Panama, and because of something more personal, a brain as shrewd and cold as his, a personality as self-assured and forceful, the suspicion that in both these respects there might be more than equality. Felix was never sure how completely Ted Jason saw through him, nor was he certain what Ted Jason could do to thwart him if he really set his mind to it. And while he thought the Governor would oppose the move in Gorotoland and so, consistently, oppose any other move that might follow, he could not be sure. Ted wanted the White House in the worst way, and when men want that, consistency does not always apply. Ted had never granted Felix much consideration in his own right, and now that he and Patsy were in the midst of an uneasy separation teetering on the edge of divorce, Ted no longer need give him even minimal consideration as a brother-in-law.
Felix, too, belonged to the many who wished on this hectic morning that the Governor of California would declare himself. He might know then more certainly what he would do.
For the moment he expected to continue as he was, talking to friends, conferring with supporters, quietly making arrangements that he might, before long, decide to implement. There was no immediate hurry. Whatever happened would not happen for several days, and the necessity for concealing his activities imposed a certain slowness on him in any event. It was best that the owners of the Canal not be aware of the traffic to “Suerte.” He was sure they did not even know he was home, and he intended to keep it so. His friends drifted in and out of Panama City casually, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups of two or three. There could be no open indication of where they were going, no alerting the hostile ones that Felix was home. He was certain he had concealed it from his friends in the North, and he was certain his presence was unknown to his enemies in the Canal Zone, who in any event were nervously involved in listening to radio and television, wondering what they would be called upon to do as a result of the President’s action in Gorotoland and the consequences that might flow from it in the Security Council meeting this afternoon. They were too busy right now, he thought with a grim little smile, to worry about him.
So brooded Felix Labaiya, oligarch of Panama of the new style, generator of plans, focus of discontents, on the terrace at “Suerte,” while along the valleys between the mountains his friends continued their furtive pilgrimages and in cities of power far away men who had the responsibility of being aware of such things noted that he was home, read secret reports on his visitors, and wondered, as they liked or feared him, how soon they would be called upon to come to his support, or root him out.
***
Chapter 6
Around the familiar green baize table of the Security Council where so many hopes have been born and so many hopes have died, in the room where the world’s eyes watch the inheritors and assassins of the dream, they were gathering this afternoon at 3 P.M., as they had so many times before, to go through the charade of promise without redemption, potential without fulfillment. One thing only made it different from all the other times they had staged the same weary, foredoomed performance: the United States was involved today, and the United States could be counted upon to abide by the charade. Where others condemned the game and made it pointless by their intransigence, where others balked and refused to play, the United States went through the motions each time as though it really believed in what was going on. The United States could be relied upon to do the Right Thing, even if nobody else, any longer, felt impelled to do so, or even to pretend it. The United States was True Blue.
It gave them all a comfortable feeling of certainty as they came down the aisles and took their seats, gossiping and chattering and greeting one another with the accustomed cordiality of players who have joined together in the same foredoomed enterprise on many another furious but futile occasion. This was one of the rare times when it might not be futile, since the United States, bless it, would behave.
In the press section, where he was surrounded by the respectful attentions of his younger American colleagues, the flattering deference of his foreign colleagues, the obsequious greetings of the many delegates who turned to stare and smile and bow, Walter could see that his own country’s representatives were already in their seats. So too were the British and French Ambassadors, the Ambassador of the Soviet Union, and the Secretary-General. The S.-G., he noted, looked even older and more frail than he had the last time Walter visited the UN, during the first Gorotoland crisis—Terry’s crisis—six months ago. Obifumatta’s crisis must be imposing a greater strain, and one the old man was less equipped to carry. There would be a strain on many before this was over, Walter thought grimly. Pray God it was not a strain from which the world would not recover.
Yet he was quite sure, so certain was he of what his country would do, that this meeting of the Security Council would mark the turning point. With some grumbling, but bowing to what it had known right along to be the correct procedure, the Administration would halt its invasion of Gorotoland and withdraw. The problem would then revert, as he had told Tashikov, to these halls where it could be discussed in a calmer and more sensible mood. Nothing would come of the discussion, of course, nothing would be achieved to prevent a recurrence somewhere else of the type of thing which had brought U.S. intervention, nothing would be done to stop the steady erosions of the world by Communism, and the world’s fabric would go right on unraveling. But at least there would be no war.
That was all that mattered, in his mind and the minds of a majority of his world: not honor, not dignity, not decency, not integrity, not real stability, not real peace.
Just—no war.
And wasn’t that enough? he demanded of his mind impatiently. Walter had no truck with those who argued that the condition of no-war was not automatically and by definition a condition of peace. He had only scorn for those who said that peace without honor, without justice, without firm and enforced agreements, without the real stability that could come only with integrity and honesty on both sides, was a butterfly that lasted no longer than the morning of the day the UN brought it forth from chrysalis. Walter brushed aside such negative arguments angrily, and so did Walter’s world. They did not believe in pushing mankind’s luck. It was all very well to insist that peace without safeguards and good faith on both sides was no peace at all. If everybody got blown up while people were insisting on safeguards a
nd good faith, what good would that do them?
Walter had covered test shots at Bikini and White Sands, he had walked the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he knew what the consequences could be if his stubborn nation insisted too much that international affairs should proceed on a basis of just principle and honored agreements. Perhaps the Communists were engaged in a campaign to conquer the world if they could, perhaps they really were dedicated to the death of the free world, including above all his own country, perhaps they never did do anything but inflame crisis and encourage chaos. If the alternative was threatening them with the bomb and perhaps using it—then, so what? In the first place, he could not conceive that the sensible peoples of the world would stand for it (even though quite a sizable number of them had disappeared into the Communist maw while they were busy telling each other it simply couldn’t happen); and in the second place, even if worst came to worst and the Communists eventually did take the world—wouldn’t that be better than having a war?
Walter thought so, and never had he thought so more firmly than he did at this moment, encouraged as he was by the deferential congratulations of colleagues who obviously agreed with him, lifted up by the respectful greetings of nations who clearly felt that his policies were infinitely more sensible than those of his government.
It was easy at such a moment for a man to feel that he was bigger than his government. He was quite sure now, as he watched the last straggling delegates enter and Chile, this month’s President of the Council, prepare to gavel the meeting into being, that events this afternoon would prove that, yes, he was.
“Mr. President,” the Soviet Ambassador began quietly in his native tongue, while the translator gave his words a dutifully heavy emphasis through the earphones, “we are seized here today of a situation known to all the world. At an early hour this morning, using as a flimsy pretext an action by troops of the legitimate government of Gorotoland momentarily exceeding their orders (‘Oh, that’s what it was,’ Lafe remarked to the British Ambassador beside him. ‘Quite inadvertent,’ Lord Maudulayne agreed), the Government of the United States has launched an unprovoked imperialist attack upon the legitimate government of Gorotoland led by His Royal Highness Prince Obifumatta. American planes, naval units, and land forces are now on their way to, or may even in some cases have actually entered, Gorotoland.
