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

by Allen Drury

  “Coffee, juice and Danish will do fine, I think,” William Abbott said. “At least for me.” The others nodded agreement, the Secret Service bowed and led the way to the solarium where they disposed themselves amid the casual chairs and sofas of the Mansion’s most relaxed and comfortable family room. Across the Ellipse the Washington Monument confronted them, its tip touched by the first rays of sun, pure, white, shining, serene as ever. William Abbott gave it a long stare; for some reason he could probably not have defined, uttered a sudden snort in which impatience, annoyance and a sort of grim, sardonic humor were inextricably mixed; and turned away.

  There was a bustle at the door. Instinctively they all stood up.

  “Gentlemen,” the Secret Service said solemnly, “the President.”

  He looked handsome as always but as tired and haggard as they, the fine eyes red-veined and haunted beneath the thoughtful forehead and the carefully combed swatch of silver hair. But at least he had the advantage of a shower, and the advantage of being President. They stared at him and he stared back, looking carefully from face to face, returning finally for a long, long moment, during which their eyes locked and did not waver, to the granitic and unyielding visage of his predecessor.

  “Gentlemen,” he said finally, “please be seated. They’ll be bringing the food right in. After they have left—” he paused and a profound, almost inadvertent sigh escaped his lips, a small, desolate sound that disturbed them all greatly—“I shall tell you about my trip to Moscow.”

  ***

  BOOK FOUR

  1

  Even then, after what appeared to be the collapse of all his idealistic and well-meaning plans, it had begun in a suddenly revived mood that was close to euphoria.

  Suddenly it was all playing games again—the landslide President, the mover and shaker, history’s maker of miracles, the great rearranger of the globe, the man who in his first dramatic hours was to lead his people and the world out of the bondage of suspicion, hatred, vengeance and war, forever.

  It was not until Air Force One and its accompanying press plane neared the Russian border that he finally realized irrevocably at last that the games were grown up beyond recall, that they would not change despite his desperate imaginings, and that the happy innocence and wild, popular hope of his election and inaugural were destined never to return.

  “What is that?” Ewan MacDonald had exclaimed suddenly, somewhere over Poland, and they had all turned quickly to look where he pointed, ahead and to the right. At almost the same moment Jawbone, sitting at the window opposite, uttered a similar excited query, and he, too, pointed.

  Ahead on both sides a swarm of Russian fighter jets materialized out of nowhere, rushed past the windows, circled and came back. Within two minutes the two American planes were neatly boxed in, front, rear, right, left, top, bottom. They were inside a hurtling cocoon. They were, as they knew with a cold and frightening instinct, imprisoned.

  And so what was he to do, President of the United States, “most powerful man on earth,” as his countrymen liked comfortably to tell themselves? It did not take the pilot’s worried message over the intercom to tell him that communication with Washington was jammed: that was only logical, and even if it had not been, what could he have done about it? Ordered an attack on Moscow? Gone down in flames in one last, romantic gesture? Started a war and unleashed terror on the world? Sane men—if any of the world’s leaders in this particular era could be considered really sane, in the everyday, normal sense of the workaday world—did not do such things. Particularly when there was always the chance that it could be—it simply had to be—not a genuinely hostile act, just an uncomfortable one—a flex of muscles, a show of power, one more method of saying, “See what we can do? Watch out, watch out! Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair!”

  So he did nothing, for there was nothing to do; and after a few agonized seconds of looking at one another in inquiry and frustration, his companions settled back, grim and unspeaking, in their seats. The journey’s tense remainder passed in silence, broken only by one brief message which the pilot transmitted over the intercom. It was in broken but reasonably good English: “You have just crossed the border of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Welcome to the people’s democratic country.”

  Soon after that, as they began the final stages of their approach to Moscow, they saw that the accompanying jets—there must have been fifty, although they had no way of making an accurate count—were dipping their wings in a salute which could only be considered ironic. Then they peeled away as swiftly as they had appeared. And the Americans landed to the cold, cold greeting, in the cold, cold city, of the minor functionaries sent by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers to do what he deemed suitable honor.

  After such a convoy and such a welcome, so brutal in style and so implicit in contempt, it was all he could do to put a good face upon it. But Presidents were supposed to put a good face on things, always equable, always pleasant, always calm; and so he made the attempt, although its strains and difficulties were clearly apparent to the closely watching press corps (its members badly shaken by the circumstances of their arrival, although nearly all were agreed that its nature should be minimized or eliminated from the reports sent home, because there was no point in stirring up American uneasiness when world peace was so vital and so clearly the desire of their grim-faced hosts). The ceremonies were short and he was glad for their brevity, for it spared him the necessity of pretending more than the barest of civilities in return. It was in a deeply troubled mood that he and his countrymen found themselves whisked away in swiftly racing limousines to the Kremlin while the world, via direct live broadcast, watched them go and clearly grasped the nature of their welcome.

  His still hopeful dream of dealing as an equal with a man he had naively believed to be as dedicated as he to solving the world’s ills was gone in an hour. He knew he was meant to come as an inferior and a supplicant, and to his already great mental and emotional burdens was added the crushing weight of the knowledge that this, in fact, was very close to an exact description of what he was.

  Yet he could not let himself really believe that, even now, or really let himself be controlled by it. In this his colleagues were of some help, for Arly and Jawbone, in particular, were indignant—still living (as Robert Leffingwell and Ewan MacDonald with a sadly troubled instinct obviously were not) in the old-fashioned world where such things were simply not done to the President of the United States.

  But by the time they were ushered in to face the Chairman, the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Defense, all looking suitably, ostentatiously grim, Arly and Jawbone, too, were silent. There had been no concession to fatigue, no nonsensical courtesy of giving them a chance to rest a little before plunging into conference. They had been shown at once to their sparsely furnished rooms, offered no nourishment, given barely time enough to go to the bathroom. Stern knocks had come on the door, uniformed guards had beckoned them imperiously forward down the endless empty corridors. The Chairman’s office was a startling contrast in luxury when they finally came to it. But it was obvious whose comfort it was designed for: not theirs.

  Tashikov and his colleagues had not even offered to shake hands and after a tentative gesture which the Chairman ignored, the President made no further attempt to indulge in amenities. He and his party were grim-faced, too, but their somber cast was not theatrics. Their dismay was genuine, and with it a growing anger, as Tashikov gestured them tersely to seats along the big table at the far side of the room, and, with his ostentatious fellow basiliks, took up his station opposite.

  “Now, Mr. President,” he said abruptly, clipping off his words and letting them tumble forward in the angry rush so familiar to all who had seen him in action as Ambassador to the UN, “we shall get down to business at last. It is not enough that you come here with the blood of imperialist aggression on your hands, but you must also ignore my most generous and charitable invitation, you must ignore the demands
of the civilized world as expressed in the UN, you must openly defy the wishes of peace-loving peoples everywhere, you must wait until there is no alternative but to demand your presence, you must—”

  “Mr. Chairman,” Ted Jason said, and there was a stirring among his colleagues, for they hoped his tone, polite but insistent, and, to their great relief, firm, might stop what appeared to be a building tirade. “Mr. Chairman, if you will permit me the common courtesy—”

  But the tirade was going too well to stop, and its proprietor was too experienced in polemical debate to yield his opponent the advantage of common courtesy. So the Chairman raved on while the Americans sat silent, white-faced, furious, powerless, unable to defend themselves or their country against the fanatical rantings of their small, ferret-faced, dangerously powerful host.

  For the better part of an hour this went on, a recapitulation of all the Communist attacks ever made against awful, corrupt, imperialist America. No charge ever parroted by the Communist press or radio throughout the world, no tortured lie ever dreamed up by history’s masters of the vicious art of turning words and meanings upside down, was forgotten by Vasily Tashikov as he ranted on. He played his voice like the instrument he had learned to make it, now soft, now loud, now angry, now dismayed, now savage, now aggrieved, but always ugly. At times it sank to ominous ranges, at times it rose to a scream. Now he pounded the table with his hands, now he jumped up and down in his chair. There was nothing new in this: it is the way Communist imperialists have always been and no doubt always will be. But not since Nikita Khrushchev sent John Kennedy dazed and trembling away from his savage raking in Vienna years ago had the ordure been heaped with such savage ferocity upon an American President.

  Now all the phony “spirit of Moscow” or “spirit of San Francisco” or spirit-of-whatever of the recent past was forgotten as though it had never existed—as indeed it never had, save in the minds of wishful Americans who really thought themselves so clever that they began to believe their own publicity. Now all the basic naked ugliness, the monumental irresponsibility toward mankind, of the rigid Communist ideology was displayed once again. And the President and his colleagues knew that the Communists would, as always, get away with it, because the world was not here to listen, and so the world—or at least much of that small portion of it which formed and controlled the world’s opinions—would simply not believe the fact if anyone tried to describe it.

  After what was literally almost an hour, fifty-seven minutes by the watch of the Secretary of State, who had glanced at it when Tashikov’s carefully staged delirium began, the Chairman abruptly stopped and drew himself back in his chair with a smug and triumphant air.

  “And now what lies will you answer me with, Mr. President?” he demanded. “What can you possibly say to excuse the insufferable, imperialist, peace-destroying actions of yourself and your government? Make them good lies, Mr. President! We wish to admire your cleverness.”

  For several moments the President said nothing, simply staring at him with a distant, thoughtful expression, which did, finally, make him uncomfortable. To cover it he snapped out, “Well, Mr. President?” in an angry tone. But still Ted Jason did not reply.

  When he spoke at last it was in a perfectly calm, perfectly quiet, perfectly polite tone of voice. To the obvious surprise of his opponents, and to the surprise of his own people as well, he did not sound abashed, disturbed, afraid or otherwise thrown off balance. Bob Leffingwell was to tell William Abbott later that he seemed at that moment to have been “supported by some inner vision.” Whether its origin lay in numbness, incomprehension or a genuine conviction of righteousness, no one would ever know except himself. But for the next few minutes, as long as he and Tashikov were talking to one another in the presence of their countrymen, it sufficed. And at first Tashikov appeared to listen as Ted point by point took up his allegations and denied them. It was only when the President reached his peroration that the Chairman stirred and let his fangs come out again.

  “Mr. Chairman,” Ted said slowly after almost forty-five minutes of uninterrupted rebuttal, “I doubt if it has ever been the sad task of an American President—or, indeed, of any sane individual—to listen to a pack of lies as monstrous as you have hurled at me. You are beyond belief, and you are also beyond the bounds of rational society. You sound insane. I hope, for your sake and mine, and for the sake of our peoples and of the world, that this is not the case. For if it is, awful things may happen.”

  “Not to us,” Vasily Tashikov snapped. Again the President studied him thoughtfully before continuing.

  “You have sounded here, in these past few minutes,” he resumed, “as though you really believed that your government is entirely innocent of any wrongdoing against America and against the peace of the world. Well: let me tell you something. It is a lie and the world knows it is a lie.”

  “The world has voted,” the Chairman noted coldly.

  “The world has chosen to ignore the facts,” the President said. “Mr. Chairman! Do you have any conception at all of the pressures I have been under this past week? Mr. Chairman, let me tell you something. You have no idea how much confidence I had in your word, and how much reliance I placed upon my belief that you were as genuinely dedicated to peace in the world as I am. No, let me finish,” he said with a sudden show of anger, as the Chairman fidgeted in his chair and started to blurt out a retort. “Because of that faith and trust in you, I made what I sincerely believe to be the most genuine gesture for peace any President has ever made. I withdrew American power from many areas. I terminated American involvement in two unfortunate wars. I placed my hopes and trust in the ability of honest men to negotiate honestly. I defended you, Mr. Chairman. I said you were the captive of your military—” Tashikov gave him a sudden broadly ironic smile, but he ignored it and went stubbornly on—“I said you were a decent and peace-loving man who wanted as much as I to establish a viable and lasting peace. I accepted your statements in good faith—I believed a Communist. And I did so against the advice of many around me, and at the cost of great internal uneasiness and stress in the United States.

  “How do you justify your betrayal of my trust, and of the hopes of my countrymen and, I think, of all the decent peoples of the world? I want to hear you tell me, for I have never quite believed that the mentality necessary to do this really existed in your government. And in fact—” and for the first time in his slow, patient recital, a heavy sigh escaped his lips, revealing a tension deeper than appeared on the surface—“I still cannot quite believe it, even now.

  “Surely we can still negotiate this on a peaceful basis. Surely we can restore sanity to the relations between our two countries, and so bring peace to the world. Surely you are not as completely evil as you are now trying to tell us, Mr. Chairman. You are not that abandoned a soul. I cannot believe it.”

  For several moments after he concluded, Tashikov studied him carefully, eyes bright and intent, lips pursed, expression unyielding. Then he turned to his colleagues with a brisk, dismissing nod. Obediently the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Defense, who, like the President’s companions, had said nothing, got up and walked out without so much as a glance across the table.

  Following their departure the Chairman sat looking about him slowly with a sarcastic expression; and so, after a moment, the President looked at his colleagues and nodded too. Obediently they also rose and departed, to be marched back by their uniformed guards through endless empty corridors to their cold lifeless rooms.

  Behind them they left two men staring at one another across a table. For several moments more the stare held, the silence remained unbroken. Neither let his gaze drop, and it was still with their eyes locked in a silent battle of wills that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers leaned forward and rested his hands upon the polished wood.

  “Now, Mr. President,” he said softly. “Let us, you and I, talk facts.” He touched a button somewhere beneath the table’s edge. An enormous map, covering the en
tire wall at the far end of the room, sprang to light. Ranged before it were two glass-topped tables, also now alight. On one of the tables was a thick-bound volume. His visitors had noticed none of this earlier, being absorbed in his carefully orchestrated hysterics.

  “Now,” he said with a satisfaction he made no attempt to conceal, “come with me, Mr. President, and we shall take a trip around the world.”

  He led the way to the map and the tables, and area by area, sea by sea, quadrant of sky by quadrant of sky, he described for his visitor the globe as it looked from Moscow. And although the President was aware that he had only the Chairman’s unsupported word, and the thought occurred, for a minute or two, that it might all be a gigantic bluff, yet he soon realized with a terrifying certainty that Tashikov was telling the truth. He was too obviously like a little boy boasting of his frightful toys. He was too obviously delighted with what he had. There was no doubt his glee was completely genuine. He was so happy he was almost giggling.

  A dreadful cold weight began to settle on the mind and heart of the President of the United States.

  Little red lines of light, moving slowly yet inexorably even as the Chairman spoke, were the Soviet fleets moving out in all the seas. Other little winking lights, completely ringing the shores of continental United States and Hawaii, were Soviet submarines armed with atomic missiles. Tiny jet planes, each representing a squadron, were illuminated rapidly one by one at their stations at home, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, the Indian Ocean, Cuba, the Bahamas, the Bering Straits and the far north of Canada.

  “They don’t know we are there, the silly Canadians,” he said scornfully. “But who can track those endless wastes except us? We are the only ones who spend the money, take the time and keep alert. We are the only ones who have the will. Even before your inaugural, your surveillance had been cut back so drastically for lack of funds that you might as well have had none.” He chuckled suddenly, a dry and chilling sound. “Someone of our people told me a lot of the money has been diverted for government housing, welfare, urban renewal and erosion control. We shall appreciate all of that, when the time comes.”