by Allen Drury
“A signal,” William Abbott said.
“How big a signal?” Senator Strickland inquired. “A little modest signal or a great big noisy one?”
“Quite big,” Bill Abbott said. “Quite noisy. A worldwide alert of all the armed forces, I think.”
“That is noisy,” Orrin agreed thoughtfully.
“But justified, don’t you think?” the President inquired. He gave them both a sharp glance. “Or don’t you?”
“Yes, I think so,” Orrin said, still thoughtfully. “If what our people say here is true.”
“And you have to assume it is,” Warren commented.
“Yes, I do,” the President said with a certain grimness. “You’ll find that.… So: if it happens, will you both support me?”
“How?” Orrin asked.
“A joint statement,” the President said crisply. “Endorsing my decision, giving it your full support, pledging yourselves to follow through on these policies for as long as necessary to insure restoration of peace and friendly control in those two areas.”
The candidates exchanged a thoughtful glance.
“Aren’t you trying to tie us down pretty far in advance, Bill?” Orrin asked finally. “I agree with your purposes, and I see the threat, and all things being equal I would expect to continue the same policies myself, but still—”
“We might want to maintain a little more flexibility,” Warren said. “It’s nothing personal,” he added hastily, as the President gave him a sudden searching look. “You know that, Bill.”
“Well,” William Abbott said, drawing himself up suddenly with all the combined dignity of Mr. President, which he was, and Mr. Speaker, which he had been and planned to be again, “if I had thought I was going to have to beg—”
“Not at all,” Warren Strickland said hastily. “Not at all, Mr. President. You know that.”
“Of course you do, Mr. President,” Orrin said shortly, “so don’t be ridiculous. We do have a point, I think. Who knows what the situation will be four months from now, on January 20?”
“It sure as hell won’t be any better,” the President said bluntly, “if I can’t get you two to stand behind me on a firm policy now. Our only chance of salvaging anything in this world, it seems to me, is to be firm. Not namby-pamby and mollycoddling around.”
“That’s hardly fair,” Orrin said sharply. “Neither of us has been namby-pamby or advocated ‘mollycoddling around.’ That’s why people such as Walter Dobius are in such a dither. We don’t offer them much choice, I’m afraid. Poor things,” he added with considerable scorn. “It touches me.”
“Yes,” the President said with the first note of amusement that had entered their conversation, “I can see that.” His tone became challenging again. “What are you going to do, then, leave me out on a limb?”
“Stop putting it on such a personal basis,” Orrin said bluntly. “You sound almost whiny, and that isn’t like you, Bill. No, we’re not going to abandon you, are we, Warren? But we have to think about it.”
“What’s to think?” the President inquired.
Warren shrugged.
“Our own advantage, I suppose.” He sighed. “That’s too candid, but it’s what it comes down to.”
“I hope your own advantage lies in supporting what’s best for the country,” the President said sharply.
“It is,” Warren agreed. “Indeed it is. And is it best for the country to tie our hands completely now, or to maintain, as I said a minute ago, flexibility? That’s the issue, Mr. President. It isn’t whether we like you personally or not. Lord knows, I hope you don’t have any question about that!”
“No, of course not,” Bill Abbott said impatiently. “I’m sorry if you think I put it on a personal basis. Maybe I did. I’m worried, that’s all. Because of course they may not pay any attention. We may be past the time for signals. That’s what I don’t know and that’s why I feel I need your support. I thought it was only fair to give you advance notice, in any case, since it will be up to one of you before long.” He stared out moodily once again at the Rose Garden. “So I guess I’m on my own, then. I’m sorry I interrupted your campaign schedules to have you come here. Nobody knows it, of course, so we’ll get you out the South Portico, away from the press, and nobody ever will. Thank you for coming.”
And he prepared to stand up, until Orrin raised a restraining hand.
“Now, just a minute,” he said. “Just—a—minute, Mr. President, if you don’t mind. Stop jumping the gun on us. You know us better than that. Just let us think for a minute, all right?”
“All right,” the President said, sitting slowly down again. “Be my guests.”
And for another few minutes, silence prevailed in the Oval Office while they, too, stared out at the garden and the gleaming white arcade leading to the Mansion. Then Orrin turned back.
“Very well,” he said crisply. “You’re the leader of my party. I have to support you—and I do agree. I think we have to take some action and I think the statement can be framed in such a way as to maintain our personal independence later. Warren, what do you think?”
“One can do a lot with words,” Senator Strickland said with a smile. “Let’s try.”
President orders worldwide armed forces alert to meet what white house statement calls “grave new threats to peace in Panama and Gorotoland.” Knox, Strickland endorse move after secret conference with abbott. New military gesture by u.s. stuns world. Peace groups denounce “bipartisan bluff” and “contrived crisis” as Moscow denies any plans to renew intervention in trouble areas.
“If there is any single most deplorable practice which has grown up in this age of deplorable foreign policy,” the Times exclaimed next morning, “it is the damnable practice of Presidents calling ‘worldwide military alerts’ every time they want to bluff the Soviet Union into something.
“We do not know what has prompted this latest sensational démarche by the Abbott Administration, but we do know one basic purpose it has: to scare the living daylights out of the country, strengthen the war party and guarantee that both Secretary Knox and Senator Strickland will be tied permanently to an anti-Soviet, anti-peace policy.
“It is not surprising that Secretary Knox has lent himself with indecent haste to this charming project, since he has been one of the chief architects of the policy all along. It is more startling to find a man of Senator Strickland’s general probity falling for it. Despite their carefully worded claims of independence, it is obvious that both candidates are now firmly committed to a continuation of hatred, suspicion and fear in the world.
“We would not blame Moscow in the slightest if it calls this bluff. In fact, we hope it does. The Soviet leaders have made it entirely clear, in their angry protest issued in Moscow last night, that they have no intention whatsoever of undertaking any new intervention in Gorotoland or Panama. Perhaps they should, just as a means of restoring some rational perspective to American policy. We strongly suspect there would be no real reaction from Washington, despite stout talk of ‘worldwide military alerts.’”
But this, as it turned out, was something that never had to be proved, for nothing happened to change the situation in either of the war-torn countries; and after three days the President announced termination of the alert, receiving additional scathing comments therefore.
In his dusty capital of Molobangwe on the plains of Gorotoland, Terence Wolowo Ajkaje, 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele, breathed a little easier, knowing that the forces of his ambitious cousin Prince Obifumatta were not going to make the all-out drive they had fully planned to make, with Russian and Chinese help, three days before. And at his ancestral home, “La Suerte”—standing for La suerte está echada, “The die is cast”—Felix Labaiya-Sofra, Patsy Jason’s ex-husband, leader of the Panamanian People’s Movement, realized that he must wait a little longer for the help his friends in Moscow and Peking had been within two hours of giving him when the President ordered the alert.
Felix in th
e lush green highlands of Panama, and Terrible Terry in his ramshackle palace in dusty Molobangwe, knew very well the truth behind the headlines; but at home in America, where uncomfortable and challenging truths about the Communist powers were never permitted credence or sometimes even space by the custodians of American communications, the episode served only to exacerbate a campaign already bitter enough.
Polls show Knox slipping steadily as anti-war protests mount in wake of recent “crisis” alert. NAWAC reported considering endorsement of Strickland as “lesser of two evils.” Senator seeks to forestall move by denouncing “viciously violent elements seeking to capture my campaign.” Secret service man, two peace demonstrators slain in clash at Knox rally in Madison. President again offers troops but candidates decline. Bitterness grows as campaign enters final weeks.
So a hot September moved on into an October serene and lovely everywhere across the tense, uneasy land. The polls did indeed show him slipping, though his crowds everywhere were large and enthusiastic and his major speeches well attended and well received. From three decades’ experience in politics he knew that if the election were to be held so much as one week later than scheduled, he might very well lose. But he felt he had a margin still, however dwindling; and since Warren seemed to be having some difficulty, both in separating himself from his would-be endorsers and in establishing a foreign-policy position really separate and distinct from Orrin’s own, he considered himself free to state with increasing emphasis exactly where he stood.
His major exposition of it came in the last week of October in Laramie, Wyoming, where he had gone deliberately for two reasons: to endorse the young Congressman who was hoping to oust Fred Van Ackerman from the Senate, and to carry the battle directly to Fred, NAWAC and the violent dissident, on Fred’s own home ground. The polls showed Fred slipping badly too. His speeches were becoming daily more strident and inflammatory as a result. With ten days left to election, Orrin decided it was time to administer the coup de grâce to both Fred and the elements he represented, if he could. His decision greatly alarmed Hal, Crystal and the President. Warren also telephoned him privately and urged him for safety’s sake not to go.
But he stuck to his own counsel, as they had known he would; a decision which, looking back later at the events of that hectic day, he thought he might possibly have modified—or again might not have, since what happened had, in all probability, been the final factor in guaranteeing November’s outcome.
They had arrived in Laramie by motorcade from Cheyenne, where they had spent the night; himself accompanied by the Secret Service contingent, his press secretary and a doctor, Ceil accompanied by her aunt by marriage, Valuela Jason Randall, over from her villa in Positano for the final days of the campaign. Orrin had never met Valuela before, but since her arrival the previous weekend he had become rapidly and genuinely fond of her. She was a racy old girl with her startling red wig, her outspoken opinions and her indomitable character, and he found in her, as he had in Ceil, a surprisingly staunch supporter. He knew that she painted, remembered vaguely having seen some of her work—as bright and garish, yet as fundamentally strong and powerful, as she seemed to be herself. He realized at once that she was a very intelligent woman, with a great store of common sense.
“I’m glad to have you with us,” he said as they waited in the hotel at Laramie prior to the speech. “I’ve seen Selena and Herbert occasionally at some of my meetings, but they haven’t exactly been friendly.”
“Sel and Herbert!” Valuela said, a snort dismissing her sister, Selena Jason Castleberry, perpetually drenched in diamonds and Causes, and their brother Herbert, Nobel prize-winning scientist whose frizzly white hair and excited pop eyes had loomed up quite regularly of late in television shots of demonstrators waving anti-Knox banners. “I consider it greatly to your credit that they’re against you. I should worry for the country if they were not.”
“I believe I have the cream of the Jason crop,” he said with a smile. She chuckled.
“You have in Ceil. I’m just an old baggage who’s come along for the fun. Are we going to have any today?”
“I hope not too much,” he said. Ceil nodded.
“We’ve had quite enough already, I think. I’d be just as happy if we could get along without any more.”
“Look here,” he said, suddenly serious. “If you’d rather not come along to the rally, you don’t have to. Why don’t you and Valuela stay here and watch it on television? That might be the best idea. Really.”
“I’ll come,” Valuela said. “Nobody knows me. You and Ceil are in a different category.”
“I’m not going to run away or back out,” Ceil said quietly. “I’m not afraid.” She smiled wryly. “Any more than I have been.”
“This could be the worst,” he said gravely. “We’re right here on the home ground of the protesters’ hero. Somebody may want to finish the uncompleted job.”
Her eyes widened as she considered it. But there was no flinching in her tone.
“We’ve faced that at each major speech.”
“Why have you done it?” he asked, thinking back over the weeks since Labor Day, the days that suddenly seemed to stretch so far away into the past that they were almost beyond memory, so crowded were they with a blur of places, people, charge and countercharge, endless challenge, endless response.
“Because,” she replied with a gravity to match his own, “I do genuinely believe that Orrin Knox is best for this country. Believing that, I have felt I must help him.” She paused and thought, face earnest and concentrated like a little girl’s, and for a moment he could see the sunny, golden little child she must have been. “I have done it for my husband, because I felt that this was what he should have done. I don’t know whether he would have—but he should have. I thought I would do it, to—to give him back something in memory that I feel he had lost in life.”
“I told you she was the cream of the crop,” Valuela said into the silence that followed. He nodded, touched for a moment to the point where he could not trust himself to speak.
“You are so right,” he said finally, managing a smile. Outside there came the inevitable stir and bustle, the all too familiar approach of the world’s demands. “I think that means us,” he said, standing up. “Are we ready?”
“For whatever,” Ceil said with a sudden smile, linking her arm through one of his.
“For another grand appearance by two great people,” Valuela said firmly, linking her arm through the other.
“So armored,” he said with a chuckle, “how could I possibly fail?”
Yet there were several moments that bitter day when he thought he might. The first occurred as soon as they emerged from the doorway of the Hotel Laramie. Several hundred people, divided about equally between his supporters and the dissident, were waiting for them across the street, held back by police and sheriffs deputies. Their appearance brought an instant tumult of sound—clashing, chaotic, mostly indecipherable save for one member of NAWAC who carried a bull horn. Through it he began shouting obscenities at Ceil and Orrin. Instantly fighting broke out, in a moment the area across the street was a confusion of shoving bodies, flying stones, bricks, sticks, flailing arms and tangled legs. The fighting spilled over, broke the police line, surged toward them. Several of NAWAC’s black-jacketed bullies, taking advantage of the confusion, formed a flying wedge and started for them. Instinctively Ceil and Valuela flinched and drew back, he turned protectively toward them, their Secret Service cordon closed ranks and hurried them back into the lobby so swiftly that they were inside again before they knew it.
Outside the fighting abruptly stopped, hoots of angry derisive laughter rose from the demonstrators. Television, faithfully recording every moment, carried the spectacle to the world: Orrin Knox, Presidential candidate, driven off the street by a crowd of demonstrators, apparently fleeing in terror for his life. Five minutes later, the street finally cleared, they were hurried into their limousine. A motorcycle escort r
oared into action. What had been planned as a leisurely triumphal parade through the streets of Laramie turned into a high-speed, furtive scurrying to the rally.
There they were hurried through massed police to the platform. Ten thousand of the faithful were on their feet, chanting and applauding with defiant enthusiasm. But the day had turned sour, the edge had been taken off.
Score one for NAWAC, he thought grimly.
Ceil, visibly upset, introduced him with half her usual effectiveness; the determined shouts of his supporters mingled with the continuing hoots of the dissident, off on the edges of the crowd. He stepped forward, took a deep breath, launched into a powerful attack on violence, called for the defeat of Fred Van Ackerman, began a measured exposition of his views on foreign policy. An object came hurtling through the air, landed at his feet, exploded with a loud bang! Instinctively, again, they all shrank back. It turned out to be a plastic bag filled with water; the bang had been contributed by someone else, apparently firing a blank. Again a roar of derisive ridicule broke through the valiant attempts of his supporters to counteract it with their applause: the mood of the day was further shattered. Mocking, evil child’s tricks appeared to be succeeding where more serious onslaughts had not.
Yet in the long run, as he concluded later, it probably helped to stem the sapping tide reported in the polls. He finished his speech on a note of rising anger that culminated in a cold denunciation of the violent and all who sought to profit from their support.
At the end of it he let his voice drop to an almost conversational tone. “Mrs. Jason and I,” he said, “have been subjected here today to the most recent of a series of deliberate humiliations, some designed to be seriously dangerous, others, like today’s, meant simply to cast ridicule and scorn upon the things for which we stand.
