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

by Allen Drury

  “Mr. President—” Robert A. Leffingwell began; and stopped; and started again.

  “Mr. President,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion but determined. “I think we have something more fundamental to discuss with you.”

  “What could be more fundamental than that?” he demanded sharply.

  The Secretary of State drew a long breath but stood his ground.

  “The question of your remaining in this office,” he said quietly.

  “Suppose I were to declare a state of national emergency,” the President said rapidly, deliberately not giving himself time to think of the fearful implications of what his Secretary of State had just said, “and ordered you, as your Commander in Chief, to help me enforce it. Then what?” And again he glanced sharply from face to face; and again sensed a bafflement, a desperate unease, something close to helplessness—but an underlying obduracy and a frightening determination, too.

  “What is it?” he demanded sharply. “Surely you are not supporting Van Ackerman against your President?”

  “Mr. President,” Bob Leffingwell said carefully, “perhaps you did not understand what I said. We have come to discuss the question—” he paused and added firmly—“we have come to discuss the wisdom—of your remaining in this office. Nothing else is as important as that. That is what we are here to discuss, Mr. President.”

  And now a silence absolutely somber and absolutely deathlike settled upon the Oval Office. A fearful chasm had opened at their feet, a tiling without precedent in American history, a moment for which there were no guidelines or patterns of the past to help any of them work his way out; least of all the man who faced them from behind the enormous desk, head trembling but erect, face pale, eyes filled with many unfathomable things.

  For what seemed a very long time, but perhaps was only a minute or two, he did not speak, nor did they: only staring at one another as in the grip of some horrid paralysis whose implacable hand they did not know how to dislodge. When he finally spoke they felt nothing but a vague surprise that he had finally done so; and it was in such a low voice that they all instinctively leaned forward a little to hear.

  “You are talking treason.”

  “God knows, Mr. President,” Bob Leffingwell responded, also very low, “we would give anything in this world if we did not have to do so. But you have permitted events to deteriorate to such a point that it is beginning to seem to many people that you are—” again he paused and took a deep breath—“that you are no longer worthy or capable of discharging the responsibilities and obligations of President of the United States.”

  And now abruptly Ted Jason was on his feet, a man desperately frightened but desperately angry, too; the anger, springing from some deep well of personal affront compounded by resentment at the affront to his office, for the moment overriding all.

  “I command you to support me!” he said harshly. “I am your President and your Commander in Chief and I command you to stop committing treason and support me as you are legally, constitutionally and morally sworn to do. I will not accept,” he added, and he grated it out although the trembling that seemed to have seized his body did not abate and his face remained ghastly pale, “any other course of conduct from any of you. Is that clear?”

  “Mr. President,” the Secretary of Defense said with an unyielding quietness that obviously cost him much, “you may no longer be in a position to command such things. For, if you have broken your contract with the country, as we have come reluctantly to believe you have—and if the people beneath you, on whom you must depend to carry out your orders, will not obey you—then who is to enforce your will? And what point is there in your remaining in office if you no longer have the power to enforce your will?”

  Still with the same blazing anger, and still with the same shattered but unyielding aspect, the President turned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  “Arrest these men,” he snapped, “for grave and heinous treason against the President of the United States and the liberties of this Republic.”

  Again there was silence, broken at last by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

  “Mr. President,” he said, looking fully as tired and strained and emotionally upset as any of them, “I am afraid we cannot obey that order.”

  “Then this is rebellion,” Ted Jason said, almost in a whisper. “Then this is rebellion.” And in a tone that almost broke them emotionally, so like a lost child did it sound, he asked of no one in particular, staring out the window at the cold winter lawn, “What am I to do? What am I ever to do?”

  For a time, again, there was silence, while their minds were filled with all the swirling, awful, inexorable things that had conspired to bring them to this dreadful moment. Bob Leffingwell spoke at last.

  “Mr. President,” he said gravely, “no one here wants to commit treason, or to drive you from office, if you will only act in the interests of this country. If you will only,” he said, and his voice was both respectful and pleading, “stop taking counsel of your fears, and just—be brave.”

  “You know why I can’t ‘be brave!’” the President cried with what seemed to be a sudden harsh recovery of purpose. “You know why I can’t respond to that silly, empty, worthless cliché! I have told you my situation vis-à-vis the Russians and I have told you completely and frankly right here in this very room. How dare you give me that silly cliché! How dare you, when it would mean the absolute certain destruction of this free nation!”

  “And will your present course mean anything else, Mr. President?” Ewan MacDonald inquired softly. “Will it, then, mean anything else?” And with a sudden bursting anger of his own, as though he could hold it back no longer, he reverted instinctively to the brogue of his childhood and cried out harshly, “For God’s sake, man, will ye no act like our leader and not like a poor wee mouse!”

  For a while the President made no response, staring directly yet apparently without anger at his Secretary of Defense. When he spoke it was in a voice level, drained of emotion, without resentment, fear or anything other than a calmness born of both desperation and conviction.

  “The only body in this land constitutionally empowered to judge me,” he said quietly, “is the Congress of the United States. It has done so. It has been given the opportunity to impeach me and it has overwhelmingly rejected that opportunity. Who, then, are you, to come here and threaten me? Who, really—” and he looked at them as though for the first time, as though he had never really seen them before and was appraising them, new and baffling individuals, “are you?… I have done my level best since I entered upon this office to do what I thought was right for my country and for world peace. That my efforts have been misunderstood and taken advantage of by our enemies is not my fault. I have been honest, I have been straightforward, I have been sincere. I shall die in the conviction that what I tried to do in my inaugural was right: you can never shake me from that.… Now, as for you—” and his voice grew harsher and more personal—“you should be shot, all of you, literally stood up against a wall and shot, for coming to me with denunciations and threats as you have. How dare you attempt such a thing with the President of the United States? How dare you? I could have you imprisoned and executed in a matter of hours for such a thing … but I will not. You will return to your respective duties and you will perform them as your Commander in Chief requires. And we will hear no more about it, because we have a much greater problem to solve together. And we must solve it, for the sake of this land.”

  “Mr. President,” Bob Leffingwell said, and his voice too was level, drained of emotion, unyielding, “it cannot be solved with you in this office unless you reverse your policies both foreign and domestic. Are you going to do so?”

  “I have told you—” Edward M. Jason said, his face beginning to flush with anger. But the Secretary of State interrupted in a tone that indicated that he and his colleagues were also having no more of it.

  “You must change them, Mr.
President,” he said quietly. “Otherwise you will be required to resign from this office.”

  “I shall go to the country tonight,” the President said. “The people will support me. I shall go over your heads to the armed forces, and they will support me. If you wish to persist in treason and create civil war, we shall see who wins.”

  “The country’s too confused and divided to support you,” Ewan MacDonald said, his voice almost pitying in tone. “And how could they do it, anyway? The only organized support you would have would be NAWAC and Van Ackerman—and you’ve already shown us that you know how reliable he would be. And as for the armed forces—” he looked at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who nodded agreement—“my colleagues will support me when I say that you could not command them, either, if you go over our heads. The military works through channels, Mr. President: there are ways of doing things, orders come down in an orderly fashion, authority must follow a clear, agreed-upon line and be authenticated every step of the way. Orders may come from you but they must come through us. If you tried to go over our heads you’d find the military confused, uncertain and unwilling to act, for fear they’d be doing the wrong thing and would be punished for it later. So there’s nothing there for you.… No, I think you had better consider our proposition, which we put to you, I say for all of us, only with the greatest reluctance and agony of heart. You are our President. We don’t enjoy forcing your hand. It goes against all tradition, all law and all our hearts want to do. But you leave us no choice, Mr. President.… This we have concluded, after great pain and soul-searching.”

  The President stared again out the window; spoke at last in a flat, almost sardonic tone.

  “And what deadline do you propose to give me? Any?”

  “We were thinking in terms of noon tomorrow,” the Secretary of State said, his tone both relieved and impersonal. “That would give you time to prepare a speech, which could, quite appropriately, be delivered to Congress.”

  “You choose the place,” Ted Jason said dryly, “and, no doubt, you write the speech.”

  “We should expect to assist,” Bob Leffingwell said evenly.

  Again Ted Jason stared out the window while they waited, hardly daring to look at him, hardly daring to breathe.

  So abruptly that it almost literally made them jump, he swung back with an air of sudden and complete resolution.

  “Very well,” he said quietly. “Very well.… No,” he said, raising a hand as some indeterminate sound, relieved, delighted, encouraging, grateful, humble, inchoate, came from them all. “I don’t want any congratulations, any anything. Just go, now. Bob and Ewan, come back at eight tonight and we will work on the speech. For now—just go.” His voice sank lower, seemed almost to break. “Just—go … if you please.”

  Murmuring confused expressions of relief, gratitude, support, encouragement, while he sat immobile and almost pathetically unresponsive behind the great desk, they did so, hastily, almost guiltily, now that their fearsome objective had been achieved.

  Outside under the South Portico, waiting for their limousines in the icy afternoon, the Secretary of Defense turned suddenly to the Secretary of State.

  “My God,” he said in a voice both awed and frightened, “we’re nice people, we’re good men, we believe in the laws of this land. My God, what have we done?”

  “What nice people and good men sometimes find themselves forced to do, by events,” the Secretary of State said bleakly. “What they must.”

  Inside, in the historic office still warm with their presence, a man driven to the wall who also considered himself a nice man, a good man, and one who had always believed in the laws of his land, did what he, too, felt he must.

  PRESIDENT ISSUES INVITATION TO RUSSIAN LEADER TO COME FOR IMMEDIATE CONFERENCE. TASHIKOV ACCEPTS JASON BID, ALREADY ON WAY TO FATEFUL WHITE HOUSE MEETING. WORLD SEES LAST HOPE FOR PEACE.

  SPECIAL BRANCH MOVES AGAINST ANTI-JASON CONSPIRACY “AT HIGHEST LEVEL.” RUMOR SECRET ARRESTS OF “POWERFUL MEN AROUND PRESIDENT.” JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO RELEASE NAMES TOMORROW.

  And so now, hardly thinking, hardly daring to think, he was embarked on the final curve of the trajectory begun at noon on Inauguration Day. Inexorably, step by step, his own good intentions—the ruthless opportunism with which the Kremlin had taken advantage of them—the blindly stubborn and uncooperative attitudes of his more conservative countrymen—had conspired to bring him to a point he had never dreamed: a point so far from where he had begun that he simply could not afford, now, to let himself contemplate all its results and all their implications.

  It was shortly before 9 a.m. After very little sleep and a half-hearted attempt at breakfast he was again sitting alone in the Oval Office. Around him the White House was beginning to come alive. Soon secretaries would be opening mail, taking telephone calls, replying to telegrams, typing reports, working on the endless assembly line of paper work that comprised the executive routine. Appointments would be made, plans would be argued, staff meetings and conferences would be held, the structure of the day would go forward like other days—or would it?

  He suspected the heavy oppression of events would hang over these corridors as it hung over him.

  The staff would go through the motions but like people everywhere they would be half-hearted, automatic, near-somnambulistic.

  Like people everywhere, they would be waiting.

  Like himself, they would be waiting.

  He knew that none of them would have to wait very long, for he had already been notified that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers had landed at Dulles International Airport at 7 a.m. and was even now on his way from the Russian Embassy with the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Defense. For a single bleak moment he realized that he himself would have no such support in their meeting. Then his mind closed angrily against the thought and a harsh and bitter mood overcame it momentarily: they deserved it for what they tried to do to me and I can’t afford to grieve for them now.

  Or for the loss of things that their absence represented.

  In a strange way, which perhaps revealed more about his inner condition than he knew, he was almost glad of this—almost glad that he had to face alone the men who had almost destroyed the dream he had given the world when he took the oath of office. Almost destroyed it—but not entirely destroyed it—for was he not still its keeper? And was there not still, in him, the strength of conviction and the idealism of heart to face them down, in the end?

  He did not know why he felt confident of this, for certainly his last meeting with Tashikov had produced no such result. If the Chairman had been brutal and gloating then, what would he not be now? Yet in some last, stubborn, desperate way, the President of the United States knew—because he had to know—that he would yet win out.

  If he could not believe this, what was left?

  In a curiously dreamlike state he became conscious of a sudden bustle and stirring in the hallways, a quickly cut-off vibration of motors in the distance, the abrupt termination of sirens which a second before had been screaming through the streets.

  His visitors were here.

  In the same unreal, almost hypnotic state, in which his mind seemed to float somewhere slightly above the surface of events, amazingly serene and untouched, he arose and stood quietly behind his desk. He would not go forward: they could come to him.

  The door opened, the appointments secretary, tense and nervous, made his announcement and withdrew. Edward M. Jason’s visitors entered and approached. And the dream collapsed.

  “Mr. President,” Vasily Tashikov said, making no attempt to shake hands or show any but the most cursory deference. “I knew you would call on us for assistance but I had not expected it quite so soon. May we sit down?”

  “Please do,” he said, sitting down himself, and they did so, the Foreign Minister on one side, the Defense Minister on the other, Tashikov squarely in the center like some shrewd little terrier, facing him across the gleaming desk. “What makes you think I cal
led on you for assistance?”

  “Is it not obvious to you?” the Chairman inquired. “It is to all the world. Your country is in chaos, your Administration is in collapse, your democracy is in ruins, you are surrounded by traitorous men you cannot trust—you call for us. Or so it seems to the world. More importantly, Mr. President, so it seems to us.” He leaned forward and inquired gently, “Is it possible we are mistaken?”

  “I felt it was time to resume our discussions of the situation you have created in the world,” the President said stiffly.

  “You felt it was time you needed help,” Vasily Tashikov said bluntly, “and we are here to give it to you. We commend you, first of all, upon the firm hand you have shown against the enemies of world peace who have attempted to destroy your plans for cooperation with the peace-loving programs of the Soviet Union. Nothing could have advanced our mutual interests more surely than their removal. We could not have asked for more. It was a superb, courageous and worthy decision on your part. We thank you for it. First you rid your country of the troublemakers of the media, and by your actions last night you eliminated the only remaining ringleaders who might have successfully defied you.”

  And he took folded copies of the Times and the Post from beneath his arm and shook them out to display the names of Leffingwell, MacDonald, the Joint Chiefs, in banner headlines; the two-column front page editorials in both now-subservient papers that praised the President in the most fulsome terms for his noble and fearless elimination of these traitorous enemies of America’s freedoms.

  “And now,” Tashikov said, neatly refolding the dutifully groveling journals and placing them precisely on the desk in front of him, “you have no one else to turn to. And so you turn to us. It is as we expected. It is as we planned.”

  “‘Planned?’” he inquired in a voice dull, almost stupid. “How could you have ‘planned’ it?”

  “Because for three years now,” the Chairman said with a quiet but obvious satisfaction, “we have been studying the personality of Edward M. Jason. There is very little about you we do not know—the overriding ambition, the arrogance of family and of mind, the strange, erratic, impulsive quirks of what you choose to regard as idealism and sincerity, the willingness to compromise with the violent when political advantage seemed the reward, the inability to suffer opposition without being persuaded to strike back blindly, the fatal tendency to let yourself be backed into corners from which the only escape has been by sacrificing yet more of the few remaining principles of this flimsy and dying democracy—above all the weakness under pressure, the weakness in power, the weakness, the weakness, the weakness!