Capable of Honor

by Allen Drury

  “Suez wasn’t,” Ted remarked.

  “Suez was somebody else’s jugular,” the President said grimly. “This is ours. No, I will not have it. The choice is action—or endless jawing, and defeat. I won’t have it.”

  Governor Jason shrugged and smiled.

  “Well, if you won’t have it—you won’t have it. You’re the one man in a position to say.”

  The President studied him thoughtfully.

  “Are you with me?”

  The Governor gave him look for look, and though a good many in the room disagreed with his position, it was impossible not to admire his guts.

  “I’m not against you, certainly. Neither am I wholeheartedly for you. There must be a middle ground, there always is, in democratic experience—”

  “These takeovers are not democratic experiences,” the President said quickly. Ted nodded,

  “I still think middle ground could be found. But obviously,” and he smiled calmly at them all, “you don’t think so, so what I think doesn’t matter.”

  “At least here,” the President agreed. “Well,” he went on, as the Governor remained impassive, “let me see you to the door. There’s no reason to embarrass you with the press. Nobody, I think, will tell the press you were here. Gentlemen, I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, no,” Ted said politely, “that’s quite all right. I want them to know I was here. After all, it was an honor to be invited.”

  The President gave him a long look and sat down again.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “So it was.”

  And that was what Ted made of it when later, after his somewhat wistful farewell as the meeting broke up, he went forth to be surrounded by the clamoring reporters outside. The meeting had begun in secrecy, but as usual in Washington the secrecy hadn’t lasted long. The Chief of Naval Operations had left abruptly at quarter to eleven from a dinner party at which the UPI’s Pentagon man had also been present; across town the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs and his wife, pleading the excuse of a call from the babysitter about one of the kids having an upset tummy, departed with equal speed from a similar gathering; the AP’s State Department man was there. Within five minutes both journalists, acting on hunch, instinct, and the off-chance, had telephoned their offices and said they were going to drop by the White House, just in case. A number of other newsmen, going home from the Dobius banquet, had been intrigued to see a rash of official limousines, going—somewhere. In no time the word was all over town, and two hundred reporters were clamoring at the door. Ted Jason made the most of it as he stood before the cameras in the driveway, his gray hair ruffled a little by the cool wind that had risen after midnight:

  “I have no statement to make, except that I have been here as the President’s guest, and that of course if I were to have any criticism of what has been decided here tonight—”

  “What has been, Governor?” a frantic voice cried from the back.

  “I assume he will tell you himself, very shortly. If I were to have any criticism of it, I should not voice it here. There are times and forums—”

  “Do you?” another voice insisted. He smiled.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “there is a patriotic duty to support. Sometimes there is a patriotic duty to disagree. Conscience must decide the issue.”

  “Now what in hell did that mean?” a puzzled voice inquired as he waved for the cameras and stepped into the limousine that waited to take him to Patsy’s in Dumbarton Oaks.

  “I don’t know,” another voice responded dryly, “but it will look good on a campaign poster. I can see it right now: Conscience Must Decide The Issue.”

  And now he is about to get the word, the President thinks as the buzzer sounds and he picks up the phone.

  “Ted?” he says with a little smile. “How are things in the Great West?”

  “If only,” Lafe said to Cullee, standing again on the beautiful lawn dropping away to the Hudson, the sun warm and happy on the trees, the handsome boy smiling his polite and gentle, faraway smile, “I could get through. But I can’t seem to.”

  “Maybe it isn’t meant that you should,” Cullee said thoughtfully, studying the level eyes that looked so directly yet so blankly into his. “Maybe he’s meant to stay this way. After all,” he said with a sudden bitter note in his voice, “it isn’t much of a world if he should come back.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too,” Lafe said, staring away across the rolling fall of palisades to the river. “But I think Mabel has the right idea.”

  Cullee smiled.

  “Oh? When have you talked to her?”

  “I haven’t, yet,” Lafe said, and at his friend’s kind but amused expression, added defensively, “well, it’s just seemed best not to. I’ve just decided to let it develop as it comes, and if it does, well—then it does, and if it doesn’t—it doesn’t. I mean, I’m not about to push anything that could mean something, at my age.”

  “And with all your other interests,” Cullee suggested. Lafe shook his head with a peculiar little grimace.

  “Ah, them. You can have ’em.”

  “Don’t need ’em, thanks,” Cullee said with a grin. “I think I’m getting fixed to get married again, soon’s I can shake Sue-Dan. Which won’t be until after the election, probably.”

  “You and Sarah hit it off pretty well, don’t you? Well, that’s good. I think it’s wonderful.”

  “At least,” Cullee said soberly, “it’s peace of mind, I think … and you know something? The older I get the more I value that. Didn’t used to be very important alongside a couple of hours in bed with nothing else on your mind, but it is now. Sarah’s very calm and peaceful and I need that, now. I’ve had enough of the other.” He smiled. “My brains have been beat in long enough.”

  “Good,” Lafe said. He looked at the silent youth sitting between them, eyes somewhere beyond the valley of the river now.

  “Mine, too, I think. Mabel and I write quite often, you know. She’s been very interested in Jimmy, here. She sees your point of view about why try to bring him back, but she says if he doesn’t come back there will never be any point in his having lived at all. I guess I reflect her thinking on that.” He looked thoughtful. “I didn’t at first.”

  “How is she? She had it pretty rough, didn’t she?”

  Lafe looked somber for a moment.

  “When Brig—died—she almost went to pieces for a while. But she’s come back fine. Getting into politics and everything. She may be a delegate to the convention. That’s where I plan to see her, if it works out that way.”

  Cullee smiled.

  “It will. It’s fate … Jimmy,” he called gently. “Can you hear me, Jimmy?”

  For a second as they leaned forward intently there seemed the slightest trace of attention, the faintest flicker of response. Then it was gone, if it had ever been.

  “Just for a minute,” Cullee said softly, “I thought—”

  “So do I,” Lafe said unhappily. “It’s always that way. Something so elusive you can’t catch it—and then it’s gone.”

  “Maybe someday it will stay. If you’re just determined enough and patient enough.”

  “I am,” Lafe said, “but sometimes it seems it’s a hard task the Lord has set me.…What are you going to do about running for Senator from California?”

  Cullee gave him a thoughtful look and frowned.

  “I think I’m going to do it. There’s still time to file. Ted isn’t going to stand in my way.” He smiled. “Or Patsy either. She was just having fun, with that rumor. So, I guess Ray Smith and I will have a little argument out there about the Administration’s horrible policies.”

  “Will he beat you for the nomination?”

  Cullee’s eyes narrowed.

  “He may, but I doubt it. In spite of all the howling, I still think a majority of the country approves of what Harley’s doing. I may be completely mistaken but that’s my belief. Even with things dragging the way they are.”

/>   “Yes, I know,” Lafe said with a worried frown. “I wish we could get something decisive in one place or the other. We could carry one inconclusive commitment if the other were settled, but with both unsettled it poses quite a political problem.”

  “How about your own campaign?”

  Lafe shrugged.

  “No sweat. Iowa’s uneasy but they like me awfully well, and the only competition in sight at the moment is a political science prof at the University who hopes to beat me on a wave of teach-ins. I don’t think he can do it.…What do your people say about your waiting so long to declare?”

  “Everybody’s waiting,” Cullee said. “It’s slowing the whole campaign down, but you can’t move without the Old Man.”

  Lafe snorted.

  “If you’d told me a year ago that that timid soul wandering around the Senate under the title ‘Vice President’ would ever be referred to as ‘the Old Man,’ I somehow don’t think I would have believed it. ‘The Old Man’ sounds like somebody pretty powerful.”

  “Harley is.”

  Lafe nodded.

  “Harley is. What time have you got?”

  “Ten-fifteen.”

  “The White House left word at the hotel for me to call him about this time. Want to go find a phone?”

  “Sure,” Cullee said, surprised. “Is something coming up in the UN we’re supposed to know about?”

  Lafe shook his head.

  “Not that I know of—but who knows?… Jimmy,” he said, firmly, holding out his hand, knowing there would be no response but making the gesture as part of his customary, determined routine, “take care of yourself. Congressman Hamilton and I have to go now. We’ll see you soon. Goodbye.”

  And he started to turn away. But even as he did so, he froze and the hairs rose on the back of his neck.

  “Cullee!” he said in an excited whisper. “Did you hear what I—”

  “I did!” Cullee responded with an equal excitement. “It was either—”

  “It was either ‘goo’ or ‘guh,’” Lafe said in an awed tone, his voice trembling as he stared at the handsome head that was turned away from them, apparently not responding, but from which sound at last had come.

  “It was certainly the start of ‘goodbye,’” Cullee agreed, “that’s for sure.…Why, you old sentimentalist!” he said, giving Lafe’s arm a squeeze. “You actually have tears in your eyes.”

  “You, too, you superior bastard,” Lafe said with a shaky laugh. “Jimmy!” he said again. “Jimmy? Goodbye! Goodbye, Jimmy! Goodbye!”

  But this time there was no answering sound, and after a moment Cullee said softly, “Don’t push your luck. It will come. Now it’s started—it will come.”

  “Oh, God,” Lafe said fervently, and it was more prayer than expletive, “I hope so. Golly! I want to go tell Harley! Let’s find that phone!”

  And a couple of minutes later he was saying eagerly to fatherly Washington, “Harley—Mr. President—you know Hal Fry’s boy Jimmy—that he sort of left to me? Well, Cullee and I have just been up here seeing him, and I think he spoke to us, Harley! I really think he did. He started to say Goodbye. Yes, sir, he really did.…Well, thank you, we’re very excited, too.” Then his voice changed and his expression became more intent as the President began to talk. “Yes.…Yes, we’re both running this year. Yes …”

  “What is it?” Cullee demanded in an insistent whisper, but Lafe gestured for silence.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, Mr. President.…Oh, I think so, yes.… I think both of us will be.…I’m sure of it.”

  After he has called Lucille to tell her about Jimmy, the President sits for a few moments staring thoughtfully out at the rose garden. There had been no particular reason for him to talk to Lafe and Cullee, they were not so material to his plans this day as all that, but it had pleased him to do so simply because they are old friends who will inevitably be affected, and he is fond of them. Now he is glad that he did, because it thrilled him, too, to hear about Jimmy. It had quite broken up Lucille for a minute or two.

  “I only wish Hal Fry were here,” she said. “But maybe he knows.”

  “I think so,” the President said. “Somewhere.…Why don’t you call Beth and tell her? She’s always been so interested.”

  “I will, right away. Have you talked to Orrin yet?”

  “Oh, no. I have a few others to get out of the way, first.”

  “All right,” she said, “then I won’t say anything.”

  “Just concentrate on Jimmy,” he suggested. “That will be enough”—adding to himself as she went off the line, Knowing Beth and her intuition, I hope so.

  While he waits for the next call to go through—it necessitates arranging for two very busy men to be in the same office at the same time—he thinks with a reminiscent fondness of the parts they are playing, and have played, in his life in recent years. If it had not been for the Senate Majority Leader, he supposes, he would not be President now: Bob Munson had forced the warring factions in Michigan to choose him for Governor, Bob Munson had fought his way across a frantic convention hall to secure his nomination for Vice President, Bob Munson had almost literally held his hand and mopped his brow and calmed him down four years ago, when Harley, fed up and frustrated with the deliberate disregard of his predecessor, had been on the point of declaring that he would not run for second term as Vice President even if the President did want him, which he doubted. Bob had told Harley he must run again, and, no doubt—though Harley had never known the inside story on that one—had told the President that he must again choose Harley to be his running mate. Bob had a lot of I.O.U.s lying around Washington, and he had cashed some of his most important for Harley Hudson. And although Bob had reached a point of being quite annoyed and impatient with him just before his predecessor died, the President likes to feel that since that low point, Bob has held him in good regard. He likes to feel that this is especially true since Geneva, and more recently, since events in Gorotoland and Panama have brought from Harley a strength many in Washington did not know he possessed. (“Like all weak men confronted with the need for decision,” Walter Dobius had written just the other day, “Harley M. Hudson overreacts—when he reacts at all.” Bob’s view, the President likes to feel, is somewhat more generous than that.)

  By the same token he likes to feel that the Speaker also holds him in fair esteem. That powerful gentleman, who runs his branch of the government with a placid air that comes from an absolute lack of political fear and an absolute toughness—which in turn come from years of seniority and influence that no one in the House now would dream of seriously challenging—is not one given to fulsome compliments. Yet in his taciturn, no-nonsense way, he too gives evidence of considerable faith in Harley M. Hudson. Certainly his support through this past hectic year has been staunch and unshakable. If he has had criticism to offer, and he has not had much, it has been constructive and helpful; if he has had doubts, they have never appeared. The only qualifications he has ever had have been the same expressed wryly three weeks ago on the night Panama exploded: the thought that some of his boys in the House might be wavering under pressure, the practical contemplation of the possibility that the President might not have quite as much “silent support” in the country as he thinks he has. But the Speaker has never indicated in the slightest that these things worry him, nor has he ever suggested to the President that he change his course or moderate his policies to meet the clamor of his critics. He has been to Harley what he has been to four other Presidents: an unwavering supporter, a good right arm, an invaluable ally, and an indispensable lieutenant. A politician in the grand style, is the Speaker. The President is grateful indeed that their tenure of office should have coincided.

  But it is to Bob Munson that his thoughts keep returning, for with Bob, because of his decisive interventions in Harley’s life, there is a special relationship. It is especially important that he stand well with Bob, because Bob has had an opportunity to judge him for what he is for the
full span of his political life. Bob, too, is one of the grand ones, and even if he had the gravest doubts, he too would go along and do his best and the President only rarely would be made aware that he had misgivings. But with Harley he is under no compulsion, personal, traditional, political, or sentimental to act this way if he doesn’t mean it. If he doesn’t approve, he certainly has the right to say so. Knowing Bob, the President is sure he wouldn’t hesitate.

  Yet though he is extrasensitive about it, and alert to every possible nuance of tone and statement, the President so far has found no evidence. They talk to one another about legislation two and three times a day, sometimes oftener, and never once has the Majority Leader expressed the slightest doubt about the course the President is following. Like the Speaker, his only worries have been for his colleagues in the Senate. Some, like Tom August, are genuinely wavering under the pressures from Walter’s world. Some, like Arly Richardson, are using their country’s torment to demagogue themselves into all the political advantage they think they can see in opposing their country’s policies. Whatever the motivations, there are enough doubtfuls to make Bob uneasy. Yet when the President last week finally asked point-blank, “Do you think I should change what I’m doing? Are they really genuinely worried enough for me to revise my policies?” Bob dismissed it tartly. “I should say not,” he responded. “The genuine doubters we’ll always have, the professional demagogues like Arly well always have. Neither bunch is worth endangering the country for. If you believe you’re right, stay with it.”

  “Do you believe I’m right?” the President asked. The Majority Leader didn’t hesitate a moment.

  “I do indeed.” A certain humor entered his voice. "Don’t you?”

  “Certainly,” the President said, “but I happen to feel that it’s important that you do.”

  “I’m flattered,” Bob Munson said, “but don’t worry about me. You’d know if I didn’t agree.”