Preserve and Protect

by Allen Drury

  “Well, now,” Jawbone began hurriedly. “Well, now—”

  “Do you think you and your friends can kick me out if I want to stay?” the President demanded. “Maybe you better think about that before you go getting pledges. Maybe I want that nomination myself, now I’m in here. Maybe I like it, Jawbone. Maybe it’s fun.”

  “Then,” Jawbone said in an aggrieved voice, “you don’t aim for us to call that convention back, do you? You jes’ aimin’ for a real fight in the Committee, and you don’t aim for us to call that convention back. I know it, I know it!”

  “I’m not saying what I’m going to do,” the President told him calmly. “The Committee has to meet, that’s obvious. After that, we’ll see.”

  “Lots of folks just can’t stomach ol’ Orrin, Mr. President,” Jawbone said sadly. “I tell you, lots of ’em just can’t.”

  “If there has to be a fight, there has to be a fight. Thanks for calling, Jawbone. You can be sure I’ll have an announcement in a day or two about the Committee. You can tell Esmé and Roger and anyone else you talk to.”

  “It’s going to be a toughie,” Jawbone said thoughtfully. “Yes, sir, like I tole Miss Bitty-Bug, it’s goin’ to be a toughie. She agrees with me, too, Mr. President. She agrees, that Miss Bitty-Bug. A real toughie.”

  “You tell Miss Bitty-Bug I agree, too. Tougher than any of us imagine, maybe. Might even involve that Senate race of yours in South Carolina, if it comes to that.”

  “Now, Mr. President,” Jawbone began in alarm, “surely, now, Mr. President—” Then his tone changed, and for the first time the President began to be really worried about the outcome of the National Committee meeting. “Well, sir,” Jawbone concluded flatly, “if that’s how it’s got to be, that’s how it’s got to be.”

  “You really feel that deeply about Orrin Knox and Ted Jason,” the President said in a wondering tone. “You really do.”

  “Miss Bitty-Bug and I, we talked it over,” Jawbone said solemnly, “and we agreed. Folks in this country mighty worried ’bout how things goin’, Mr. President. They mighty worried. We got a big responsibility in that National Committee. We got a real big responsibility.”

  “And you really feel that Ted Jason, with all his wishy-washy attitude toward the Communists, and all his encouragement of violence—”

  “You say wishy-washy, Mr. President,” Jawbone objected, “but seems to lots of folks it’s not wishy-washy a-tall, just common sense and workin’ for peace. Folks want peace, Mr. President, don’t you forget that. Oh, my, do they want peace. And violence? Why, shucks, a few lil’ ol’ riots don’t add up to much.”

  “More than a few, Jawbone,” the President remarked grimly, “and you know it.”

  “Well, shucks,” Jawbone said. “Well, shucks, now. I guess folks got a right to indicate how they feel, now, don’t they, just a right to indicate?”

  “Stop being disingenuous,” the President snapped with a sudden anger. “You know damned well what’s under way here, and you know damned well it’s got to be stopped. You can tell that to Esmé and Roger, too.”

  “’Course, Mr. President, ’course, now, sir, nobody’s goin’ to endorse or support unwarranted and unnecessary violence—”

  “As distinct from warranted and necessary?” the President demanded. “You crossed the line there, Jawbone. You crossed right over.”

  “Well, sir, no, sir,” Jawbone said hastily. “I don’t mean it’s ever warranted or necessary, but just the same”—his tone became stubborn and he concluded with a dogged defiance—“just the same, lots of folks want Ted Jason.”

  “The Committee will be convened in due course,” the President said flatly. “And we shall see then what happens.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jawbone agreed. “We surely will, Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, sir.”

  And so they would, the President promised himself grimly as the conversation ended. Here was Ted Jason again, to complicate his problems: here was the justification for violence, if it could but be tied to a purpose that could be rationalized as good. Again he uttered a wry, disgusted, impatient sound, with such vigorous vehemence that his sister, just going by in the hall, called out and asked if he was all right.

  “First-rate,” he called back. “Can you bring me a glass of ice water?”

  And when she did he tried, as he always had, to erase the worried look on her face with a matter-of-fact, comforting remark that would give her something else to think about besides him and his problems, which now were multiplied beyond even her usual loving concern.

  “Ellie,” he said, “how would you and Tom like to come to Washington and live in the White House? You could be my official hostess. You’re the logical one, and now that Tom’s retired there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, that I can see. Tom could be my unofficial eyes and ears to scout around the government for me, and you could sashay around with Dolly Munson and Patsy Labaiya and the best of them. How about it?”

  “Oh,” she said, putting her hand to her cheek in her characteristic way, “I’m sure that’s awfully kind of you, Bill, but I’m really not used to that kind of life, with all those glamorous people, and—”

  “Now, nonsense,” he said with a big-brotherly firmness. “Never let it be said that a child of Leadville can’t cope with the world’s great. I have: you can. Anyway, Ellie, your President needs you. You know you and Tom will be happy as clams. Let’s have no more talk about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a little smile. “Masterful Mr. Speaker does it again.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I wonder if I should even speak to Patsy Labaiya.”

  “Better,” he said with a chuckle. Then the chuckle died. “Her friends will picket the White House if you don’t.”

  “Billy,” she said earnestly, “do be careful. Please, be careful.”

  He gave her a long look.

  “As careful as can be. But you know how it is.”

  “Yes,” she agreed quietly. “And it terrifies me.”

  He shrugged.

  “The alternative is to run away. I can’t do that. It’s against my nature and against my job. I’m the only President there is. I can’t duck it, even if I wanted to.”

  “I can imagine you wanting to,” she said with a trace of returning humor. He smiled.

  “I’m beginning to see its possibilities. I may just stick it out for the fascination of finding out what’s going to happen next.”

  But nothing, probably, could have prepared him for it, either for the telephone call from California or the calls he made thereafter, or the events that followed. It just proved, he told himself wryly now as he sat and stared across the dark water, hearing the sounds of distant parties, the murmur of wind-touched trees, that there was no point in trying to imagine, if you sat in the White House, what might happen next.

  Nor was there much point in anybody else’s trying. Because the headlines that burst upon the world after the urgent call from Orrin Knox were such as to confound and dismay all those who thought events could be tailored to accommodate the wishes of the naive and the fears of the timid.

  PRESIDENT ORDERS ALL-OUT DRIVE TO CAPTURE GOROTO REBEL CAPITAL, HINTS U.S. MAY SEAL PANAMA REBEL PORT TO WORLD SHIPPING …

  … SOVIETS, BRITISH DEMAND UN SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING, HEADS OF STATE TO ATTEND ON WAY TO HUDSON FUNERAL.

  From a log cabin at Tahoe he was shaking the world. I’m sorry, old friend, he told Harley in his mind. I didn’t want to ruin your ceremonies. I wanted things to stay quiet until you were decently gone, but you know how it is in this job: they don’t give you much leeway. You understand. You were its prisoner, too.

  In the morning he slipped away to Reno and flew back to his capital unattended by the press, as he had planned.

  6

  In the Delegates’ Lounge of the United Nations, the world was aflutter.

  In the Delegates’ Lounge of the United Nations, the world was never anything else, but this time it was really aflutter.

  No soo
ner had a good many of its members concluded with relief that one American maniac had gone than they were confronted with the fact that another seemed to be in the White House.

  It was enough to make anybody flutter.

  Not the least concerned, as he stood in the doorway and studied the busy scene—Asians, Africans and Arabs swirling about in brilliantly colored eddies of agitation, the more drably dressed delegates of Europe West, Europe East and the Americas providing darker-suited areas of emphasis as they gathered in worried groups or sat at little tables before the great windows, drinking coffee with a nervous air—was the Ambassador of India.

  Krishna Khaleel, as he often told himself and his friends here, who were many, was a man who liked peace and quiet. Yet in all his years in the towering glass monolith on the East River he had never known life to be anything but hectic, chaotic, bothersome and upsetting. Crisis tumbled upon crisis, and with the best good will in the world it was hard for an objective Indian not to feel that nine times out of ten it was the fault of the difficult, obstreperous, unpredictable, unmanageable United States.

  It was not that he and his government did not often warn this recalcitrant giant, for they did. India could always be relied upon to criticize American civilization, deplore American morals, oppose American policies, and come running to America for succor when threatened by starvation or Red China. There was a special relationship between these two great nations, and this morning, K.K. felt, it was threatened as it had rarely been before by the persistence of America in doing, with an infallible and inexorable instinct, the wrong thing.

  Because the relationship was so special, he did not hesitate now, any more than he had on any other occasion, to convey the alarm and concern of his government to the first Americans he saw. On this Monday afternoon, shortly before the special session of the Security Council that was scheduled to begin at three p.m., these were two, the same two members of the U.S. delegation with whom he had so often discussed the deplorable tendencies of their government. One was stocky and sandy-complexioned, possessed of an engagingly boyish grin and an eye that missed few things, particularly women. The other was a giant young Negro whose normally good-natured face wore now an expression of uncompromising determination.

  Senator Lafe Smith of Iowa and Representative Cullee Hamilton of California saw him at the same moment as he saw them, and with one accord waved him over to their table by the window.

  “My dear friends,” he exclaimed, a little breathlessly, for his progress across the buzzing room had been interrupted by effusive greetings from the Ambassador of Guyana, the Ambassador of Brazil, the Ambassador of the Maldives and the Special Delegate from Anguilla, “my dear friends, crisis again!”

  “Sit down, K.K.,” Lafe Smith said with a kindly air, “and tell us all about it. Today we need the wisdom of the East.”

  “Which we hope,” Cullee Hamilton said, his sober expression relaxing into a smile, “will be clear, distinct, straightforward—”

  “And on our side,” Senator Smith concluded for him with a grin. The Indian Ambassador frowned as he took the proffered chair and accepted a cup of coffee from a passing waiter.

  “Well, my dear friends!” he said again. “What can I say, what can I say? This is all so sudden, so disturbing, so—”

  “Out with it, K.K.,” Lafe said cheerfully. “So American. I’ll bet you all thought that with a new President in the White House things would quiet down and fade away and you could stop worrying.”

  “I’m afraid,” Cullee observed, “they don’t know the Speaker.”

  “We thought,” K.K. said with dignity, “that while there would probably be no immediate major change, at least there might be a gradual easing of tensions, a pause, a new approach”—he repeated the phrase, with capitals—“A New Approach—as the result of the tragic death of our late dear friend. But apparently the policy is to rush ahead into new adventures, new escalations, new dreadful flirtations with the peace and safety of the entire world—”

  “Now, just a minute,” Cullee said. “Just a minute, if you don’t mind, K.K. Who is it who caused this new escalation? Who is it who was going to send in reinforcements and raise the ante? Who is it who was planning an all-out assault in Gorotoland and Panama on Wednesday, timed to coincide with Harley’s funeral?”

  “No doubt that is what the United States will claim,” Krishna Khaleel said serenely, “but it is not what most of the world will believe.”

  “But we have the captured battle plans!” Lafe said indignantly.

  “Battle plans, battle plans!” the Indian Ambassador said with an airy dismissal. “Battle plans may be forged, you know.”

  For a long moment the Americans stared at one another with an air of frustrated disbelief. Then they began to laugh, rather helplessly.

  “Why do you laugh?” K.K. demanded. “It is a serious matter, dear Lafe, dear Cullee. It is a terribly serious matter!”

  “We’re only laughing because it hurts, K.K.,” Cullee said. “How conditioned they have you all. It’s beyond belief.”

  “Of course you realize it is not I who say the United States is lying, or my government who say it is lying,” the Indian Ambassador observed. “I am just reflecting what many here will say, and warning you of it. In any case, it is now rather academic, is it not? The issue has been joined, and we are about to have a meeting. Will the President use your veto again, as Harley did before?”

  “I would consider it very likely,” Senator Smith said dryly.

  “It will be a sad mistake,” Krishna Khaleel said regretfully. “There is such an opportunity, now, for A New Approach. It is tragic to see the great United States blindly following the same old anti-Communist pattern. All of these here”—and with a broad gesture which was noted in many corners of the room, he indicated the swirling robes, the huddling business suits, the whole humming, bustling, busy concourse—“are so eager for A New Approach. They are so upset and worried about present events. They wish so much that the United States had only—”

  “Had only what, K.K.?” Cullee Hamilton asked with a rising inflection. “Waited until Wednesday when the whole government—the whole country, really—is attending Harley’s funeral, and then come away to find out we’d been hit so hard in Gorotoland and Panama that we’d lose them both. That’s exactly what your friends in Moscow and Peking were planning for us.”

  “They are not necessarily my friends,” the Indian Ambassador objected stiffly. “And I do not know, of my own knowledge, what they were planning.”

  “Well, we’re going to show you this afternoon,” Lafe promised grimly. “It’s going to be an interesting session.”

  “I believe there will be twenty-three heads of state,” K.K. remarked politely. “A good showcase for your charges.”

  Cullee snorted.

  “A good showcase for the truth.”

  “May be,” the Indian Ambassador said with an elusive and infuriating air of superior knowledge. “May be.”

  “K.K.—” Cullee began with a real annoyance, but before he could go further he was interrupted by two other old friends who had been slowly approaching them across the great room through a tangle of extended hands and fervent arm clutches from fellow delegates.

  “Don’t say it, old boy,” Lord Claude Maudulayne said cheerfully. “Just don’t say it. Temper never solved a thing, you know.”

  “Particularly,” Raoul Barre agreed blandly, “when one argues a losing case.”

  Studying the British and French Ambassadors without too much cordiality on this tense afternoon, the Americans could see that they had a certain air of seeing eye-to-eye that they had not always shown in the past.

  “I didn’t know you two were going steady again,” Lafe remarked dryly. “The President’s decisions really have created a horrible situation, haven’t they?”

  “They have for us,” Lord Maudulayne replied crisply. “This business of interfering with trade and shipping, you know—it’s an absolute violation o
f international law.”

  “‘International law,’ whatever that is!” Cullee said. “An absolute violation of some people’s desire to trade with everybody. While of course supporting us officially, in Whitehall. How do you do it?”

  “I could tell you better with a cup of coffee,” Claude Maudulayne said. “Move over.” And he squeezed in between Cullee and K.K. with a cheerful blandness while Raoul took a seat next to Lafe. All around them the busy room took note of their little group and buzzed and murmured. “Seriously, we are most deeply concerned. My government is determined that this precedent shall not be allowed to stand.”

  “My President,” Lafe remarked pleasantly, “is determined that it shall. And I would be willing to bet that eighty per cent of the American people are behind him.”

  Raoul Barre gave him a sarcastic glance.

  “‘The American people, the American people!’ I saw these ‘American people’ demonstrating in the street as I entered the building just now. They seemed to be carrying big signs which said such things as STOP BOMBING INNOCENT BLACKS! OPEN FREE PANAMA’S PORTS TO WORLD TRADE! One even had a poem”—he took out an envelope, put on his glasses—“which I copied to send to my government as an indication of the mood of the great ‘American people’: WATCH OUT, ABBOTT/DON’T GET THE HABIT/REMEMBER IF YOU WANT HAPPY DAYS/THE GUN YOU USE CAN SHOOT BOTH WAYS. Rather poor meter,” he concluded dryly, “but the thought is clear.”

  “It pleases you, doesn’t it?” Lafe remarked. “You Europeans just love to see us get into the riot-and-assassination pattern, don’t you? It puts everybody on the same level. Maybe it can even be the end of America, and that would be what you’d love to have happen, wouldn’t it?”